PERSONALITY 



F.B.JEVONS 







IIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIHHIH1I..II..,.,.,.,.,, 




Class " KD -311 
Book. JA_ 



} Km 



COPYRIGHT DEPOSIT. 



Digitized by the Internet Archive 
in 2011 with funding from' 
The Library of Congress 



http://www.archive.org/details/personality01jevo 



By F. B. Jevons, Lift ZX 

Professor of Philosophy in the University of Durham 



Personality. 

The Idea of God in Early Religions, 

Comparative Religion. 



PERSONALITY 



BY 
F/BrJEVONS, Litt.D. 






PROFESSOR OF PHILOSOPHY IN THE UNIVERSITY OF DURHAM 

AUTHOR OF "THE IDEA OF GOD IN EARLY RELIGIONS,** 
"COMPARATIVE RELIGION,*' ETC. 



G. P. PUTNAM'S SONS 

NEW YORK AND LONDON 

Zbc fmicfeerbocfcer press 
1913 



Copyright, 19 13 

BY 

G. P. PUTNAM'S SONS 






* 



Ube Ifcnfcfterbocfeer press, Iftew J^orfe 






©CI.A346843 



PREFACE 

\ CVERYBODY believes in his own 

" existence and that he knows some- 
thing about himself. What exactly he 
knows about himself, and his own per- 
sonality, is another question. It is an 
interesting question; and, the moment 
a man tries to answer it, he begins to be a 
philosopher. But it is a difficult ques- 
tion, and, inasmuch as science contrives 
to get on without answering or even 
raising it, he may be tempted to doubt 
whether his own personality has any 
reality. Especially will this doubt be- 
come troublesome, when he discovers that 
psychology provides no proof of the 
existence of the self, and that some psy- 
chologists proceed to deny the reality of 
personal identity. Probably, however, 
he will feel that, if he cannot prove, 
neither, after all, can he doubt, his own 
existence; and, with that, he may be 

iii 



iv Preface 

tempted to imagine that he can dismiss 
the question. But he can't. The same 
doubts that are raised about his own per- 
sonality and existence can be raised about 
the existence and personality of God. If 
personality is an unmeaning term, desig- 
nating nothing, then there are no persons, 
human or divine. If it has a meaning, 
and designates a reality of some kind, 
then we ought at least to try to under- 
stand what we mean by it, and to form 
some conception of what the reality is 
which is designated by the term. 

The preceding words state in outline 
the argument which is contained in the 
following pages, and which formed the 
matter of four lectures, given last summer 
at Oxford in the Vacation Term for 
Biblical Study. In Chapter I. it is 
pointed out that physical science and 
psychology can go their way and do their 
work without assuming the existence of 
personality. In Chapter II. is an exam- 
ination of arguments which are based on 
psychology, and are intended to show 
that I am certain I do not exist; that 



Preface v 

personality is a mistaken inference; and 
that the only Thinker is the passing 
Thought. Chapter III. is a discussion of 
M. Bergson's argument that " there are 
changes, but no things which change, " 
and the inference to be drawn from it, 
that there are changes, but no persons 
who change. In Chapter IV. it is main- 
tained that persons are not individuals, 
in the sense of closed systems, but are at 
once subjects cognisant of objects, and 
objects presented to other subjects; that 
the principle of unity which holds persons 
together, and the impulse towards unity, 
with one's neighbour and one's God, is 
love. 

F. B. Jevons. 

Bishop Hatfield's Hall, Durham, 
February i, 19 13. 



CONTENTS 
CHAPTER I 

PAGE 

Personality and Impersonality . . i 

CHAPTER II 
Psychology and Personality . . 39 

CHAPTER III 
Personality and Change ... 78 

CHAPTER IV 
Personality and Individuality . .125 
Index . 169 



Vll 



PERSONALITY 



CHAPTER I 

PERSONALITY AND IMPERSONALITY 

Personality, a hypothesis not required either 
by Physical Science or by Psychology or by Pre- 
Animism. Impersonality, however, denies, and 
therefore pre-supposes, Personality. 

[T is possible to be quite certain about 
* a thing, and quite wrong: to err is 
human; and the whole human race may 
make the same mistake for centuries 
before discovering the error. For count- 
less centuries mankind was certain that 
the earth was motionless: the Lord "hath 
made the round world so sure, that it 
cannot be moved/ ' And yet it moves. 
When the earth thus gives way beneath 
our feet — and, at every step we take, we 
thrust the earth away — where shall we 



2 Personality 

find any ground of certainty? A common 
mode of expressing absolute certainty 
about a thing is to say, "I am as certain 
of it as I am of my own existence/ ' And 
it is indisputable that most people are 
certain of their own existence, But it is 
also indisputable that all people for long 
were certain that the earth "cannot be 
moved/ ' If, then, for all their certainty 
they were wrong about the earth, it is 
apparently, at any rate, possible that on 
the other point also — their own existence 
— they may be quite certain and yet 
quite wrong. We can understand now 
how natural and how easy it was for man 
to draw the wrong inference from the 
apparent motion of the sun. Then may 
not his certainty about his own existence 
be an inference which it is easy to draw, 
which is first drawn precisely because it is 
easiest drawn, and for that very reason 
is least likely to be the correct inference? 
If it took mankind ages to draw the 
correct inference in the one case, little 
wonder that it has not yet been commonly 
drawn in the other case. If the move- 



Personality and Impersonality 3 

ment of thought in the one case was from 
error to truth, may it not in the other 
case be also in the same direction? 

"In the notion of self," a recently pub- 
lished philosophical work (English Thought 
for English Thinkers, p. 193) says, "we 
have the sole presented type of substance, 
a something that continues unchanged 
under a change of accidents." But the 
notion of the self as something that con- 
tinues unchanged is very like the notion 
of the earth as something that "cannot be 
moved." We have had to give up the 
notion that the earth is the centre round 
which the solar system revolves. We are 
slowly parting with the notion that man 
is the centre round which and for which 
the universe exists. The geocentric 
notion has gone and is carrying with it 
the anthropocentric notion also. There 
is no fixed, unmoved, unchanging centre 
such as the earth was once supposed to 
be. The notion is illusory. To recognise 
that the notion of personality, the notion 
of the self as something which exists or 
continues unchanged, may be an illusory 



4 Personality 

notion, is doubtless as difficult as to real- 
ise that the earth is rotating on its axis 
and revolving round the sun. Yet the 
difficulty does not alter the fact. The 
truth, indeed, is that some facts can be 
explained just as satisfactorily on the 
assumption that the sun moves as they 
can be on the assumption that the earth 
moves. And those facts were precisely 
the facts which were most obvious and 
which therefore monopolised the atten- 
tion of man for countless centuries. The 
facts which were less obvious failed, for 
that very reason, to arrest his attention. 
But, when his attention was arrested, it 
became evident eventually that when all 
the facts — and not merely the most ob- 
vious — were taken into account, however 
great the difficulty of realising the motion 
of the earth, the difficulties in the way of 
supposing it motionless were infinitely 
greater. These difficulties however did 
not present themselves at first. At first, 
and for long afterwards, the supposition 
that the earth was fixed and motionless, 
and that the sun it was that moved 



Personality and Impersonality 5 

sufficed as an explanation of the facts 
that were observed. In the same way, 
the supposition that, though the things 
around one change, one does not change 
oneself — that one's Self, or Personality, is 
11 something that continues unchanged 
under a change of accidents' ' — is a sup- 
position which is easily made, which is 
made indeed without thinking, but which 
now in these later days may seem incap- 
able of sustaining any longer the weight 
and burden of the facts which science has 
accumulated upon it. 

In the lowest stage of development in 
which we can directly observe human 
society, we find not only that man believes 
— or rather we should say acts on the 
belief — in his own personality, but also 
that everywhere around him he finds a 
personality not his own. He does things 
himself — or thinks he does — and his ex- 
planation of the things that happen to 
him, if he feels that they require explana- 
tion, is that they also are the doing of 
some personal being or other. His notion 
is that he is a personal power, surrounded 



6 Personality 

by personal powers. He believes in 
agents, in personal agents ; and he has, as 
yet, no conception of impersonal causes. 
He is in the stage of development known 
as animism. The successive journeys of 
the sun do not seem to him to be suc- 
cessions merely. He must account for 
them; and the only account he can 
render is that they are the doing or the 
behaviour of a personal power, which 
is like himself in that it is personal, 
though as power it transcends any power 
of his own. 

In this supposition of personal power 
he finds a satisfactory explanation of the 
unexpected and the unforeseen. And, 
with his very limited knowledge of natural 
laws, much is to him unforeseeable that 
modern science predicts with a sense of 
certainty. Eclipses and comets which 
confirm our knowledge of the laws of 
nature are ascribed by him to the arbi- 
trary will of the personal agents whom he 
supposes to produce them. On the other 
hand, the events in the ordinary, trivial 
round of human life, which happen in the 



Personality and Impersonality 7 

usual way, which are expected and which 
come off as expected, seem to require no 
explanation. They are regarded as quite 
natural. And the progress of knowledge, 
or at any rate the advance of scientific 
knowledge, consists precisely in wresting 
territory from the domain of the unex- 
pected and the unforeseen. It consists 
in ascertaining the conditions under which 
an event, once unforeseeable and startling 
in its occurrence, may be expected with 
assurance, or even be produced by man. 
When the conditions which determine 
that the thunder shall follow the lightning 
are known, there is nothing more myste- 
rious or unexpected in the sequence than 
there is in the fact that the electric bell 
rings when you press the push. Primitive 
man's supposition that personal power 
was required to account for the thunder 
— the Psalmist's conviction that "the 
voice of thy thunder was in the heaven " — 
becomes superfluous : given the conditions 
enumerated by science, the thunder or 
the bell is heard. No further explana- 
tion is necessary. There is no room for 



8 Personality 

any other conditions than those which 
science enumerates — and neither personal 
power nor arbitrary will is amongst those 
conditions. Science seeks to ascertain 
the conditions under which events do as 
a matter of fact take place ; and it formu- 
lates those conditions in the shape of 
laws of co-existence and succession. So 
far has science now advanced in dealing 
in this way with the occurrences which 
take place around us, that the existence 
of laws of nature is beyond the possibility 
of doubt. That our knowledge of them 
is as yet defective and erroneous is also 
beyond the possibility of doubt. If our 
knowledge of the laws of nature were not 
defective and erroneous, it would be 
impossible for science to advance. It is 
because there are defects and errors that 
there is room and need for science to pro- 
gress. But the reason why science has 
progressed thus far is that it has set aside 
the attempt to find amongst the objects 
of nature either personality or personal 
power. It no longer seeks for either. Its 
aim is to ascertain the laws of the co- 



Personality and Impersonality 9 

existence and succession of the events 
that take place around us. 

But the events that take place around 
us are not the only events which interest 
us. What goes on within us interests us 
profoundly. And what goes on within 
us may be studied, as well as what takes 
place around us. It may be studied and 
it is studied by Psychology. The object 
of Psychology, as a science, must obvi- 
ously be the same as that of all other 
sciences. Their object is to ascertain the 
laws of nature. Its object therefore is 
to ascertain the laws of human nature. 
The other sciences study the co-existence 
and succession of the events that take 
place around us. The science of Psycho- 
logy studies the co-existence and succes- 
sion of the events that take place within 
us. Psychology, John Stuart Mill tells 
us, is "the science which is concerned 
with the uniformities of succession — the 
laws, whether ultimate or derivative — ■ 
according to which mental states succeed 
one another." Psychology, therefore, as 
thus defined, deals with uniformities; 



io Personality 

like all the other sciences, it sets aside 
arbitrary will. By the very meaning of 
the words, what is " arbitrary' ' is not 
" uniform/ ' If mental states succeed 
one another in arbitrary fashion, they 
do not succeed one another uniformly. 
And if there are no uniformities of succes- 
sion, there can be no science of mental 
states — that is, there can be no psycho- 
logy. But it is undeniable that in similar 
circumstances we have much the same 
feelings; and when we have the same 
feelings we act in much the same way as 
before. Obviously, therefore, there are 
uniformities of succession within us, just 
as there are uniformities of succession in 
the events that take place around us. 
And if the latter can be studied and form- 
ulated with some degree of correctness, 
then the former can also. Human nature 
as well as physical nature can be studied 
scientifically. Science can deal with the 
one as well as with the other—on the same 
terms and conditions, viz., that arbitrary 
will is excluded, and uniformity of suc- 
cession is admitted. When, however, we 



Personality and Impersonality n 

have once come to see that uniformity of 
succession must be admitted, and the 
freedom of the will be excluded, in order 
that psychology may take its proper place 
amongst the sciences, we shall have little 
hesitation in taking one further step. 
Indeed, if psychology is to assume its full 
rank as a science we must take the one 
further step. Physical science, or the 
natural sciences, have, as we have seen, 
no use for the notion, entertained by 
primitive man and by the Psalmist, that 
personal power is required to account for 
thunder and lightning. "The thun- 
derer," a Jupiter tonans, is from the point 
of view of science wholly superfluous: 
there is no such person. If then psycho- 
logy is to be really scientific — if it is to 
be concerned solely with "the unifor- 
mities of succession, according to which 
mental states succeed one another' ' — ■ 
then just as a thunderer is superfluous, 
so from the point of view of science a 
thinker is superfluous: there is no such 
person. Mental states, or states of con- 
sciousness, of course, there must be, if 



12 Personality 

there is to be any psychology at all. And 
those states of consciousness must not 
only succeed one another, but must 
exhibit uniformities of succession, if psy- 
chology is to be a science. But beyond 
or behind "the uniformities of succession, 
according to which mental states succeed 
one another' ' it is as unnecessary for 
psychology to go, as it is for physical 
science to go beyond or behind the uni- 
formities of succession which are to be 
observed in the occurrence of the events 
that take place around us. Indeed, just 
as the hypothesis of "a thundferer," a 
Jupiter tonans, is, for the purposes of 
science, either otiose or positively mis- 
leading, so for the science of psychology 
the hypothesis of "a thinker' ' is either 
otiose or positively misleading. If it 
implies and is conceded to imply nothing 
more than the fact, admitted on all hands, 
that consciousness exists and that states 
of consciousness exhibit uniformities of 
succession, then the hypothesis of "a 
thinker 7 ' is otiose and superfluous. No 
one denies the existence of consciousness. 



Personality and Impersonality 13 

But the consciousness which is thus 
admitted to exist is, as Huxley termed it, 
"epiphenomenal." It accompanies suc- 
cessive states of the brain, as the shadow 
of a train may accompany the train as it 
travels. But the shadow does not make 
the train move; nor does this " epipheno- 
menal" consciousness cause the successive 
states of the brain: it simply accompanies 
them. 

If, on the other hand, the hypothesis 
of "a thinker' ' is found on consideration 
to imply something more than that there 
are thoughts or states of consciousness, 
exhibiting uniformities of succession, that 
over and above, or behind, the changing 
thoughts or successive states of conscious- 
ness, there is " something that continues 
unchanged/ ' a permanent Self or person, 
then we relapse into a position exactly 
parallel to the supposition discarded by 
physical science, that over and above, or 
behind, the thunder, there is "a thun- 
derer," who thunders, when he chooses 
to do so, arbitrarily. At the present day 
however we have given up the belief in a 



14 Personality 

Jupiter tonans; and, if we have given up 
the notion of "a thunderer," we are, it 
may be argued, called upon, in con- 
sistency, to give up the notion of "a 
thinker." 

Thus the events within us and the 
events around us, when studied from the 
same point of view — the scientific point 
of view — and by the same method — the 
scientific method — point in the same 
direction and to the same conclusion. 
All knowledge, if it is really knowledge, 
and not a misapprehension of facts, must 
be harmonious and consistent: It must 
form a unity. The unification of know- 
ledge consists precisely in discarding as- 
sumptions prematurely made. Such 
premature assumptions, accounting for 
some facts only, must be discarded in 
favour of those which come later and 
which account for a much wider range of 
facts. Personality, from this point of 
view, is an assumption which was early 
made to account for all the events — ■ 
external and internal — which arrested 
the attention of man and called for 



Personality and Impersonality 15 

explanation. It is an assumption which 
science has steadily set aside. The suc- 
cession of events without us can be 
explained by science without resorting 
to that hypothesis. The succession of 
events within us can be explained by 
science without resorting to it. It is not 
an aid, but an embarrassment to science. 
It does not tend to the unification of 
knowledge, but, by introducing an un- 
fathomable gap between the personal and 
the impersonal, seems to make unification 
impossible. 

Perhaps it may be felt to be strange 
that all mankind, at all stages of human 
development, should have resorted to this 
notion of personality as the sole explana- 
tion of all events that take place around 
us and within us, and that yet this notion 
of personality should be a false explana- 
tion of the facts. But, in the first place, 
even if we assume this to have been the 
case, it is by no means unique or singular. 
As we have already seen, the notion 
that the earth cannot be moved was for 
thousands of years accepted as a fact, 



1 6 Personality 

whereas it was really a false explanation 
of the actual facts. There is no a priori 
reason why a false inference should not, 
for a time, and for a long time, be univer- 
sally drawn. But, if it be felt strange 
that man should from the beginning have 
gone so far astray from the simple facts 
of observation as to attribute every event 
that interested him to personal agency, 
then it will also be felt necessary to inquire 
whether in the beginning he really did 
attribute everything that occurred to 
personal agency, whether, that is to say, 
it was from animism that man started in 
his attempt to explain the events that 
happen in the world, or from something 
earlier. And in point of fact within the 
last few years, inquiry into this question 
has been started; and the theory of a 
pre-animistic period in the intellectual 
evolution of man has been put forward. 
"The root idea of this pre- Animism," 
Mr. Clodd says in The Transactions of 
the Third Congress of the History of Relig- 
ions, 1908, "is that of power every- 
where, power vaguely apprehended, but 



Personality and Impersonality 17 

immanent, and as yet unclothed with 
personal or supernatural attributes. " In 
a paper on " Pre- Animistic Religion, " 
which appeared in Folk Lore in June, 1900, 
Mr. Marett had earlier argued that 
" Religious Awe is towards Powers, and 
these are not necessarily spirits or ghosts, 
though they tend to become so." And 
in the Census of India, 1901, Sir Herbert 
Risley tells us that in Chota Nagpur he 
has come across instances which " linger 
on as survivals of the impersonal stages 
of early religion." Sir Herbert's im- 
pression is that what the jungle people 
there really do believe in is "not a person 
at all in any sense of the word"; but 
"some sort of power." Mr. Clodd cites 
as indicative of this pre-animistic period, 
"The Melanesian and Maori belief in a 
power or influence called mana, to which 
no personal qualities are attributed, " and 
says that "with this, in broad and in- 
definite conception, may be compared 
the kutchi of the Australian Dieri, the 
agud of the Torres Islanders, the manitou 
of the Algonkins, the wakonda of the 



18 Personality 

Dakotans, and the oki or orenda of the Iro- 
quois.' ' "The Bantu mulungu and the 
Kaffir unkulunkulu have no connection 
with the idea of personality, " and he 
quotes Mr. Hollis's suggestion that in the 
engai of the Masai "we may have primi- 
tive and developed religious sentiment, 
where the personality of the deity is 
hardly separated from striking natural 
phenomena. " 

Let us now consider this pre-animistic 
theory in its relation to the question of 
Personality. The notion of Personality 
is a notion which science, as we have seen, 
finds useless or worse than useless for its 
purposes. The uniformities of succession 
which science is concerned to ascertain 
and establish, whether they be uniformi- 
ties in the succession of the events that 
take place around man, or of those which 
take place within him, can be ascertained 
and established without assuming the 
existence of persons. Indeed, if by per- 
sons are meant beings possessing free-will, 
and having the power to act or not to act 
uniformly, then the notion of Personality 



Personality and Impersonality 19 

is worse than useless for the purposes of 
science. From this point of view, if 
science is to be accepted, the notion of 
Personality must be regarded as an erro- 
neous notion. It must be regarded not as 
a fact, but as a false inference from the 
facts. It must be regarded not as a fact 
from the beginning, but as a fallacy into 
which man stumbled. In the stage of his 
evolution known as animism, we find him 
fallen into the fallacy of supposing that 
he is a person having to do with other 
personalities, human and other than 
human. There must therefore have been 
a previous stage, prior to animism, in 
which as yet he had not stumbled into 
this fallacy. In this pre-animistic period, 
man observed succession in the events 
that took place around him, but he did 
not ascribe those events to the action of 
any person: he had not yet the concep- 
tion — the fallacious conception — of "a 
person at all, in any sense of the word." 
What he had, we are told, was a vague 
conception of power, "unclothed with 
personal or supernatural attributes. " 



20 Personality 

When things happened to man, in this 
stage of his evolution, he did not regard 
them as the doing of any person at all: 
he ascribed them "to some sort of power," 
to power vaguely conceived. 

For the moment let us suppose that 
this was so, and for the moment let us not 
ask for any proof that it was so. Let us 
ask, And what then? The supposition 
enables us to dismiss personality. If 
there was a stage in the evolution of man 
when he simply had not the vaguest 
conception of personality, he obviously 
could not use the conception 6f personal 
power to account for the occurrence of 
any event. When therefore he wished 
to explain anything that befell him, he 
was in one respect, and a very important 
respect, like the modern man of science: 
he did not make the mistake of ascribing 
the event to any person or personality. 
And so far, the hypothesis of a pre-animis- 
tic period appears to harmonise with the 
view that the belief in personality is 
an inference — a false inference from the 
facts. The hypothesis of pre-animism 



Personality and Impersonality 21 

enables us to point to a period when it 
had as yet never entered the mind of man 
to draw that inference. The teaching of 
science enables us to see that the in- 
ference — when it came to be drawn — was 
a false inference. Pre-animistic man 
could not ascribe the production of 
events to personal agency, for the very 
sufficient reason that he had no concep- 
tion of persons or personality. 

But though pre-animistic man on this 
supposition was thus in agreement with 
the most recent teachings of science, he 
was also, on this supposition, from the 
beginning absolutely wrong, from the 
scientific point of view, on another matter. 
According to the hypothesis, though pre- 
animistic man had no conception of a 
person at all, in any sense of the word, 
he had a vague conception of power, and 
it was to power, vaguely conceived, that 
he attributed the events which happened 
around him or happened to him. But 
science has come to set aside the concep- 
tion of power, just as it has set aside the 
conception of personality. Its object is 



22 Personality 

to ascertain and state uniformities of 
succession; and that it can do perfectly 
well without using the conception, or 
reverting to the hypothesis, of power. 
Science deals with the sequence of events 
and endeavours to ascertain uniformities 
of sequence. Whether there is any power 
which produces those sequences and uni- 
formities is a question into which science 
does not enter. Whether there be such a 
power or not does not in the least affect 
the fact that the sequences and uniformi- 
ties do actually obtain. But as regards 
pre-animistic man the supposition is that 
he did ascribe the occurrence of events 
to some sort of power; and from the 
scientific point of view pre-animistic man 
was just as much in error in ascribing 
events to some sort of power, as animistic 
man was in ascribing events to personal 
power or persons. In resorting to the 
supposition of power man went just as far 
astray from the simple facts with which 
scientific observation is concerned as he 
did in resorting to the supposition of 
persons or personal power. 



Personality and Impersonality 2$ 

Power, then, whether personal or im- 
personal, is a conception for which science 
has no use. Power, either personal or 
impersonal, is an explanation of events 
to which man has always had recourse. 
On the theory that animism is the earliest 
stage in the intellectual evolution of man, 
personal power was that in which man 
from the beginning sought the explana- 
tion of the events that befell him. On 
the theory of pre-animism it was in power, 
power vaguely conceived, some sort of 
power, that man first sought the explana- 
tion of the events that befell him. Now, 
if the power, to which, on the pre-animis- 
tic theory, man referred the events that 
befell him, was the power not of a person 
at all, in any sense of the word, then 
perhaps it might be argued that such 
impersonal power, even though it was but 
a hypothesis, is at any rate a hypothesis 
of which modern science is tolerant: it 
is a hypothesis with which the facts of 
science and of ordinary experience are 
reconcilable, whereas the hypothesis of 
personality or personal power is irreconcil- 



24 Personality 

able with the scientific conception of the 
uniformity of nature. 

The question then is as to the nature of 
the power to which man in the beginning 
referred the events that befell him. On 
the pre-animistic theory, man at that 
stage of his history had not yet framed the 
conception, the fallacious conception of 
personality, or personal power. Obvi- 
ously, therefore, if he had no idea of 
personality, he could have no idea of im- 
personality. The idea of personality must 
exist if it is to be denied. Imperson- 
ality is simply the denial of personality. 
Impersonal power is simply power which 
is not personal ; and the idea of impersonal 
power could not possibly enter the mind 
of a man unless he had some sort of 
notion of personal power. By universal 
consent man in the animistic period had 
a notion — however vague and however 
unsatisfactory — of personality; he ex- 
plained every event that seemed to him 
to require explanation by ascribing it to 
the action of some personality — either 
a human personality or some being which 



Personality and Impersonality 25 

resembled man in being a personality, 
but which possessed more and other 
powers than man. Only by slow degrees 
did he come to attain to the idea of power 
in the abstract, apart from the person 
who exercised it. The idea of "things," 
having power to act, was an idea which 
animistic man did not possess. 

The argument advanced in support of 
the theory of pre-animism is that because 
man had no conception, or had not yet 
realised the conception, of things as im- 
personal, therefore he had no conception 
of persons and did not know persons to be 
persons. Now this argument would be 
conclusive, if it were true that personality 
was a relative term, if person and thing 
were relative terms necessarily implying 
each other in the same way that "mother" 
and "child" are terms each of which 
necessarily implies the other and neither 
of which can be understood without 
reference to the other. If "person" 
were a term which had no meaning, when 
considered apart from "things, " as 
"mother" would be a term without 



26 Personality 

signification if we did not know the 
meaning of " child, " then indeed it would 
be undeniable that the conception of 
" person' ' could not arise or be under- 
stood before man had the conception of 
"things. " But that is not the case: 
" person' ' is a term, the meaning of which 
involves no reference to "things." It is 
perfectly possible to this day to suppose 
that persons and persons alone exist, 
that there is nothing and can be nothing 
which is impersonal. The supposition 
may be false, it may overlook facts which 
are fatal to it. And animistic man may 
have overlooked those facts. If there are 
such facts, then it is part of the theory 
of animism that at that stage of his 
intellectual development man did over- 
look them. The theory of animism is 
that man did things (or supposed he did) 
and that he explained such things as he 
undertook to explain by supposing that 
they too were done by somebody. What- 
ever the conception was that animistic 
man framed of himself and his fellow- 
men and of the way in which or the power 



Personality and Impersonality 27 

by which he and they performed actions, 
that conception was the conception of 
personality. And the conception of 
"things, " having power to act had not 
yet been entertained by him: what we 
regard as lifeless, inanimate "things," he 
regarded as living persons, acting as he 
did, and from motives similar to his, when 
they did act. The one and only explana- 
tion he could give or admit for anything 
that required explanation was that some- 
body did it. The only power he could or 
did conceive of was personal power. That 
filled the whole field of his intellectual 
vision. 

Those upholders therefore of the theory 
of pre-animism who assert that the period 
of animism was preceded by "impersonal 
stages of early religion* ' commit them- 
selves to maintaining that man framed 
the concept of impersonal things before he 
formed any concept of personality. But 
this position appears untenable. 

Other upholders of the pre-animistic 
theory avoid the manifest error of suppos- 
ing that the concept of impersonal things 



28 Personality 

could exist prior to and independent of 
the concept of personality. They adopt 
a position which appears to be more in 
harmony with the theory of evolution. 
They assume that the two concepts of the 
personal and the impersonal were evolved 
or differentiated out of some earlier con- 
cept, which was neither, and which, when 
differentiated, was differentiated into both. 
This earlier concept was vaguely con- 
ceived : it was neither the concept of per- 
sonality nor the concept of thing, but was 
as one in which both those concepts were 
held as it were in solution — to be precipi- 
tated at some later time in some way 
as yet unexplained. What man at this 
period, on this theory, was aware of was 
power, neither personal nor impersonal, 
but ' ' power vaguely conceived, ' ' power not 
yet differentiated into personal power and 
impersonal power, power "to which, " Mr. 
Clodd says, "no personal qualities are 
attributed/' and to which, therefore, we 
may add, no impersonal qualities could 
be attributed. In a word, at this period 
man did not distinguish between personal 



Personality and Impersonality 29 

and impersonal power, between person 
and thing. But that is precisely what is 
meant by "animism." In the animistic 
period man did not distinguish between 
person and thing. And the reason why 
he did not differentiate between them is 
that as yet he had not formed the idea 
that things had power to act, whereas he 
knew that men did act. It is quite true 
that man at that time had not yet differ- 
entiated personal power from impersonal 
power. But it is also true that he knew 
he himself had power to act, even though 
he had not yet formed the idea that things 
could act. The root-idea of animism is 
that things were done by man and done 
to him; and that in the one case as in the 
other they were done by somebody — by 
man himself or by some one who resem- 
bled man, in that he did things and did 
them for a reason, but differed from him 
in so far as he did things which it was 
beyond man to do. 

We may therefore set aside that form 
of the pre-animistic theory which bases 
itself on the assumption that originally 



30 Personality 

power was conceived as being neither 
personal nor impersonal, and that only 
subsequently was it differentiated into the 
personal and the impersonal. The divi- 
sion of power, into power which is personal 
and power which is not, is an exhaustive 
division, there is no room for any third 
kind : power is either personal or it is not. 
The power Mr. Clodd talks of as being 
"unclothed with personal attributes" is 
simply impersonal power. And the pre- 
animistic theory is only of philosophic 
value, if understood to mean that primi- 
tive, unsophisticated man, seeing facts 
as they are, saw only impersonal power 
wherever he gazed. The theory may be 
said to be of philosophic value, because 
it accords with the philosophy which 
teaches that the uniformities of succession, 
exhibited by matter in motion, if they 
require power to account for them, are 
compatible only with the assumption of 
impersonal power. Then if the power 
which manifests itself to us in uniformi- 
ties of succession be impersonal, the 
theory of pre-animism shows that from 



Personality and Impersonality 31 

the beginning man recognised the power 
as impersonal. If in subsequent stages 
of his evolution he was for a long time 
led astray by the attempt to interpret 
that power as personal, the aberration 
was bound in the long run to be corrected : 
that closer study of observed facts, which 
we call science, necessarily recalled him 
from such speculative extravagances to 
the actual uniformities of succession 
which are simply incompatible with the 
idea that they are the expression of 
arbitrary, personal power. 

This philosophic theory, however, 
makes two assumptions, and neither of 
them is a necessary assumption. It 
assumes that the free will of a personal 
power cannot behave uniformly; and on 
the strength of that assumption it infers 
that the uniformities of succession which 
we observe cannot be the work of a 
personal power but are proof conclusive 
that the power which produces them 
must be impersonal. Next, it assumes 
that man framed the concept of imper- 
sonal things before he framed any concept 



32 Personality 

of personality — that is to say, the idea 
of personality was denied before it was 
known. The truth however is that man 
from the beginning did things himself, 
and from that fact drew the conclusion 
that the things which happened to him 
were done by somebody. 

We may therefore note that the philo- 
sophic theory which explains events by 
the assumption that they are the expres- 
sions of a power which must be impersonal, 
is based simply on an assumption: the 
power may be equally well assumed to be 
personal. Next, if there be no personal 
power in the universe, then man indeed 
cannot be a personality, and his belief 
that he is a person must be fallacious. 
But inasmuch as it is a mere assumption 
that there is no personal power and that 
there are no persons in the universe, there 
is nothing but mere assumption to set 
against man's belief in his own personality. 

There is, however, one interesting 
point of resemblance or affinity, which 
should not be overlooked, between the 
philosophic theory which denies person- 



Personality and Impersonality 33 

ality and the intellectual position of man 
in the animistic stage. Animistic man 
found an explanation for every event 
which struck him as requiring explana- 
tion in the supposition that it was the 
doing of some personal being. But 
events which happened to him in the 
ordinary course of things, in the way 
in which they always had happened, 
and in which he took it for granted they 
would happen, required no explanation at 
all. It was startling, unexpected occur- 
rences which alone called for explanation. 
So, too, to the modern man of science 
events which happen in the usual way, 
that is to say, uniformities of succession, 
seem to require no explanation at all. 
The savage does not invoke — even man 
in the animistic stage did not invoke — 
personal power to account for the ex- 
pected, but only for the unexpected. 
Animistic man does not invoke imper- 
sonal power to account for the expected: 
he does not account for it, or think even 
of trying to account for it — he takes it 
for granted and as it comes. 



34 Personality 

Now that is the interesting point of 
resemblance between these two schools 
of thought, ancient and modern: the 
ordinary uniformities of succession, be- 
cause they are familiar and established, 
call for no explanation, or rather explana- 
tion consists simply in stating accurately 
the conditions under which a given event 
will take place. Why things should be so 
arranged, that given the conditions the 
event occurs, is a question which neither 
the man of science nor animistic man 
inquires into. For each the fact, the 
simple fact, suffices. If the philosopher 
likes to assume the existence of imper- 
sonal power to account for the uniformity 
of succession, he may do so, as far as the 
man of science is concerned. Animistic 
man did not account for the uniformity 
of successions by that or any other 
assumption at all: it never occurred to 
him even to try to account for it — it 
never occurred to him that there was 
anything to account for. And so, too, 
modern science aims only at establishing 
uniformities of succession, not at account- 



Personality and Impersonality 35 

ing for them. If the expected happens, 
no explanation is called for. The pro- 
gress of science consists in teaching us 
what we may expect. It consists, that 
is to say, in steadily diminishing the 
unexpected. But it was the unexpected 
and the startling which animistic man 
explained by the assumption that some 
personal agent other than human pro- 
duced it. The progress of science there- 
fore has consisted in steadily diminishing 
the occasions, and the excuse for restoring 
to the hypothesis of personal agency to 
account for the events that take place 
around us. So successful has science 
proved that it does not hesitate in holding 
that nature is absolutely and without 
exception uniform: we may, and as a 
matter of fact we do, know only some of 
the conditions which prevail around us, 
and consequently we can only foresee 
some of the consequences which will 
ensue. But, if nature is uniform, then 
we must believe that the consequences 
which we do not foresee are, just as much 
as the consequences which we do foresee, 



36 Personality 

the outcome of the pre-existing conditions. 
That is to say, if nature is throughout 
and without exception uniform, then 
theoretically every event that happens 
is foreseeable. Unexpected and startling 
events only show our ignorance of the 
causes at work: they do not warrant us in 
resorting to the hypothesis of personal 
agency to account for them. But even 
so — granting that the course of nature is 
thus absolutely uniform, granting that 
the uniformity of nature were not an 
assumption, but were a demonstrated 
fact — we shall, being human," still ask, 
Why? We shall still ask what there is in 
that fact, if it be a fact, inconsistent 
with the belief that the uniformity of 
nature is the expression of a will which 
knows no shadow of turning? The idea, 
indeed, that the only evidence which can 
be adduced for the belief in a divine will 
consists in supposed violations of the 
uniformity of nature will have to be 
dropped, if the uniformity of nature is 
proved inviolable. But then the very 
uniformity of nature will harmonise with 



Personality and Impersonality 37 

the conception of a divine will which 
changes not. 

On the other hand, we must bear in 
mind that the conception of the uni- 
formity of nature does not adapt itself 
very readily to the theory of evolution. 
The essence of the theory of evolution is 
that the state of the universe at any 
moment is different from any state that 
has ever been before or will ever be again. 
What is implied in the very notion of 
uniformities of succession is that what has 
once occurred will under the same con- 
ditions occur again. What is implied in 
the very notion of evolution is that the 
same conditions never can recur. The 
course of nature exhibits not monotonous 
uniformity but continual change. If we 
cannot foresee — and we certainly cannot 
foresee — changes that a moment may 
bring forth, the reason may be just the 
opposite of that alleged by the upholders 
of the theory that nature is uniform. 
They hold that nature is uniform and that 
we can only dimly trace the lines on 
which she works; but though our vision 



38 Personality 

is unsteady, her lines nevertheless are 
fixed. But possibly the actual truth may- 
be that neither the course of nature nor 
that of human nature is pre-determined. 
And the reason why we cannot foresee 
it may simply be that it is not yet fixed. 
It may be that what is not yet cannot 
for that very reason now be known. 



CHAPTER II 

PSYCHOLOGY AND PERSONALITY 

Hume's position, that man is nothing but a 
collection of different perceptions; and that, 
consequently, I am certain I do not exist — 
William James's argument (i) that personality 
is an inference, and a mistaken inference; (2) 
that the only thinker is the passing thought. 

IF any science can tell us what Person- 
* ality or the Self is, it should be the 
science of Psychology. And yet the 
science of Psychology tells us in the long 
run either that there is no Self, no Per- 
sonality; or that the problem of Person- 
ality is one which can no more be solved 
by the science of Psychology than the 
question whether there is a God can be 
solved by science in general. If then we 
assume that what science cannot know 
cannot be knowledge — if, that is to say, 
we deny the value of metaphysics — we 

39 



40 Personality 

shall hold that neither problem is soluble, 
that is to say we shall adopt the Agnostic 
position. Now, the Agnostic attitude 
seems to some people a rational attitude 
to assume towards the question whether 
there is or is not a Divine Personality; 
there seems to them to be no absurdity in 
saying there may or may not be a God, 
but that it is impossible to know whether 
there is or is not. But to assume the 
Agnostic attitude towards human person- 
ality, and to say, "I may or may not 
exist, but in either case it is quite im- 
possible for me to know whether I do or 
do not," is an absurdity from which, 
when once it is plainly stated, most 
people shrink. The absurdity is equally 
great whether it be towards the Divine 
Personality or the human that the 
Agnostic attitude is assumed; but the 
absurdity is, for various reasons, more 
easily swallowed in the one case than in 
the other. 

But the Agnostic attitude towards the 
problem of Personality is based on the 
assumption that the science of Psychology 



Psychology and Personality 41 

leaves the problem open, whereas to some 
psychologists it seems that their science, 
so far from leaving the problem open, 
definitely decides it against the existence 
of Personality. Those psychologists who 
disbelieve in metaphysics are especially 
concerned to rescue the problem of per- 
sonality from metaphysical discussion, 
and to decide it, if possible, by psycho- 
logy on scientific grounds. Speaking 
generally, we may say that psychologists 
who decide, or interpret psychology as 
deciding, against Personality, do nothing 
more than repeat Hume's argument. 
Hume's argument, in the famous chapter 
on " Personal Identity" in his Treatise 
on Human Nature, may be summed up in 
a few short quotations. He says : " There 
are some philosophers who imagine we 
are every moment intimately conscious 
of what we call our self; that we feel its 
existence and its continuance in existence, 
and are certain, beyond the evidence of a 
demonstration, both of its perfect identity 
and simplicity. . . . Unluckily all these 
positive assertions are contrary to that 



42 Personality 

very experience which is pleaded for them ; 
nor have we any idea of Self, after the 
manner it is here explained. . . . For 
my part, when I enter most intimately 
into what I call myself, I always stumble 
on some particular perception or other of 
heat or cold, light or shade, love or hatred, 
pain or pleasure. I never can catch 
myself at any time without a perception, 
and never can observe anything but the 
perception. ... If anyone upon serious 
and unprejudiced reflection thinks he has 
a different notion of himself, I must con- 
fess I can no longer reason with him. 
. . . He may, perhaps, perceive some- 
thing simple and continued which he 
calls himself; though I am certain there is 
no such principle in me. But setting 
aside some metaphysicians of this kind, 
I may venture to affirm of the rest of 
mankind that they are nothing but a 
bundle or collection of different percep- 
tions. " 

It will be observed that Hume says: 
" When I enter most intimately into what 
I call myself, I always stumble on some 



Psychology and Personality 43 

particular perception or other, " and this 
mode of expression seems to imply that I 
who enter into what I call myself am 
different from that into which I enter. If 
that is what is meant, as well as implied, 
then it is evident that the various percep- 
tions of heat or cold, light or shade, love 
or hatred, pain or pleasure, are not the 
same as I who have the various percep- 
tions. I am not any one of them; they 
are, all of them, things on which I stumble. 
I am not a pain or a pleasure. I am not 
any one of the different perceptions which 
I have, nor am I a bundle or collection of 
different perceptions. If that is so, if 
I am not a perception or a pleasure or 
a pain, then, of course, I am not to be 
found in the bundle or collection of differ- 
ent perceptions. And Hume's argument 
seems to be that if I am not to be found 
in the bundle, I am found not to exist at 
all. " When I enter most intimately into 
what I call myself," I find "nothing but 
a bundle or collection of different percep- 
tions. " By "myself" Hume evidently 
means as he says, "nothing but a bundle 



44 Personality 

or collection of different perceptions. " 
But when he says that "I stumble 
on some particular perception or other," 
he seems to draw a distinction between 
the subject of the verb "stumble" and 
the object. "I" am the subject who 
stumble on, or enter on, something; and 
the object on which I stumble, or into 
which I enter, is spoken of by Hume 
indifferently as " myself, " and as nothing 
but a bundle or collection of different 
perceptions. Now, if we take the object 
on which I stumble, or into which I enter, 
to be a bundle of perceptions, and nothing 
but a bundle of perceptions, then " I " the 
subject am plainly different from the 
perceptions which I have. And if I am 
not to be found in the perceptions, that is 
simply because I, who have the percep- 
tions, am not one of the perceptions that 
I have. The inference that I who have 
the perceptions do not exist is obviously 
a false inference. It simply amounts to 
saying that because I — as everybody will 
agree — am not one of my perceptions, and 
am not one of the objects which I 



Psychology and Personality 45 

perceive, therefore I, the subject, who 
perceive, do not exist. 

But, as already said, Hume speaks of 
that on which I stumble sometimes as 
being a bundle of perceptions and some- 
times as being "myself." The question 
then arises whether I who stumble am to 
be regarded as identical with the "self" 
on which I stumble, or as different from 
"myself." Now, as we have seen, if we 
identify the object on which I stumble 
with Hume's ' ' bundle of perceptions, ' ' 
there is no difficulty; I am neither a 
sensation nor a bundle of sensations — I 
am not a pleasure or a pain; I am not 
heat or cold, or light or shade; I am not 
any of the sensations that I have, or all 
of them. Neither can any or all of them 
be "myself." Nor, when I stumble on 
some particular perception or other, do 
I enter into what I call myself. The 
subject which stumbles on something or 
other is not the object on which it stum- 
bles. But though this is evidently true it 
is evidently not what Hume meant : it is 
the diametrical opposite of the conclusion 



46 Personality 

which he wished to draw. The conclusion 
which he wished to establish was that I 
am nothing but the perceptions which 
I have. His words, therefore, "When I 
enter most intimately into what I call 
myself, " ought to be interpreted accord- 
ing to the meaning which he himself puts 
upon the terms which he employs. By 
" myself' ' he declares that he means 
"nothing but a bundle or collection of 
different perceptions." If therefore the 
term "I" as used by Hume is identical 
with "myself," then his words, "when I 
enter most intimately into what I call 
myself," mean "when a bundle or collec- 
tion of perceptions enters into a bundle or 
collection of perceptions." Such words, 
however, have no meaning. And if they 
had — if pleasure or pain, heat or cold, 
light or shade, which according to Hume 
are perceptions, could perceive anything 
— still the words would be irrelevant. 
They would be irrelevant because the 
question in dispute is not about percep- 
tions, but about my perceptions — about 
the perceptions which I have. Percep- 



Psychology and Personality 47 

tions which nobody has simply do not 
exist. And as they do not exist they 
cannot explain anything. As they do not 
exist, it is impossible for Hume or any 
one else to enter into them. The only 
perceptions I can enter into are my own ; 
and the only person who can enter into 
my sensations is myself. Hume says: 
"I never can catch myself at any time 
without a perception, " but it would be 
at least as true to say that I never can 
at any time catch a perception without 
myself. Hume, however, thinks that he 
can catch a perception without himself. 
That is obviously erroneous: the only 
perceptions anyone can have are his 
own. But without dwelling on that, let 
us simply observe Hume's position as he 
states it himself. His position is that I 
can catch perceptions, but can never 
catch myself: therefore the perceptions 
exist, but "I" do not. The reply is 
obvious: if "I" do not exist I cannot 
catch perceptions or anything else. Hume 
cannot start his argument without ad- 
mitting that I, the subject, exist: "I" 



48 Personality 

enter intimately into what I call myself, 
" I " stumble on some perception or other, 
" I " observe nothing but perceptions, " I " 
have a certain notion of myself, "I" 
am certain that no other notion exists in 
me. Nay ! in the last resort he falls back 
upon his own personal certainty that the 
facts are as he states, and not as they are 
stated by the metaphysicians whom he 
waives aside. The metaphysician, being 
a metaphysician, "may perhaps, " Hume 
says, "perceive something simple and 
continued, which he calls himself; though 
I am certain there is no such principle in 
me. " Of course, if there is no "me," 
there can be no such principle in me. But 
if there is no such principle as "self," if 
"I" do not exist, then how can "I" be 
certain? There is no "I" to be certain; 
and the whole argument collapses. On 
the other hand, if there is an "I" to be 
certain, and if I am certain, then to say 
"I am certain I do not exist," is simple 
self-contradiction. Yet it is on that 
simple self-contradiction that Hume's 
reduction of the self to "nothing but a 



Psychology and Personality 49 

bundle or collection of different percep- 
tions" is based. 

Let us now turn to a modern psycho- 
logist, the late William James, and let 
us take the chapter in his Principles 
of Psychology which deals with "The 
Consciousness of Self. " "In its widest 
possible sense, " he says, "a man's Self 
is the sum total of all that we can call his, 
not only his body and his psychic powers, 
but his clothes and his house, his wife 
and children, his ancestors and friends, 
his reputation and works, his lands and 
horses, and yacht and bank account. " 
This sentence occurs on the first page of 
the chapter, and at once marks James's 
position as akin to Hume's. A difference 
there is. Hume says the Self is nothing 
but different perceptions. James in- 
cludes much more — indeed he includes so 
much that even a solipsist could hardly 
complain that it did not include enough. 
The difference however is not of import- 
ance to our present argument. What is 
of importance is the resemblance. James 
says, " A man's Self is the sum total of all 



50 Personality 

that he can call his. " That is to say, 
there are first all the things that can be 
called his, and next there is "he" who 
calls them his; and the man's Self is the 
sum total of the things that can be called 
his. But "he" the man, is just left out. 
He does not figure amongst the sum total 
of all the things that can be called his. 
The Self includes them indeed, but finds 
no room for him. Thus from the start 
James is in harmony in this matter with 
Hume. By "myself" Hume tells us he 
means "nothing but a bundle or collec- 
tion of different perceptions." The Self, 
according to Hume, consists of the per- 
ceptions and does not include the percip- 
ient, just as according to James a man's 
self consists of all that can be called his 
but does not include the owner. 

According to James "the sum total of 
all that a man can call his" constitutes 
the Empirical Self or Me. And, when 
James analyses the Empirical Self or Me, 
we find its constituents to be (i) the 
Material Self, (2) the Social Self, (3) the 
Spiritual Self. The material self is not 



Psychology and Personality 51 

merely the body. That is only part of 
the material self. The material self, as 
understood by James, comprises father, 
mother, wife and children, our home, our 
property, anything that is saturated with 
our labour. " There are, " he says, "few 
men who would not feel personally anni- 
hilated if a lifelong construction of their 
hands or brains — say an entomological 
collection or an extensive work in 
manuscript — were suddenly swept away." 
Next, there is the social Self. "A man's 
social self is the recognition he gets from 
his mates." And from this it follows 
that, "properly speaking, a man has as 
many social selves as there are individuals 
who recognise him and carry an image of 
him in their mind. " Finally, there is the 
Spiritual Self by which James means, he 
says, "a man's inner or subjective being, 
his psychic faculties or dispositions. " 
It is important, therefore, for a proper 
comprehension of what James means by 
the Empirical Self or Me, to understand 
that by the Spiritual Self James means 
not the subject or person who has the 



52 Personality 

faculties or displays the dispositions, 
but the faculties or dispositions taken 
by themselves. " These psychic disposi- 
tions," he says, "are the most enduring 
and intimate part of the self. ' ' The other 
parts of the self, according to James, are 
of course the Material Self, and the Social 
Self, already described. From them the 
Spiritual Self is quite distinguishable. It 
may be regarded in the abstract or in the 
concrete. Regarded in the abstract it is 
but psychic faculties or dispositions. In 
consciousness, "as it actually presents 
itself," James says, "a plurality of such 
faculties is always to be found." From 
these words it would seem, then, accord- 
ing to James, that the faculties or dis- 
positions which make up that part of 
the Empirical Self or Me designated the 
Spiritual Self are found in consciousness 
as it actually presents itself. And to 
bring out the fact that the Empirical 
Self or Me is an object observed and is not 
the subject, or the person, I, that does the 
observing, we have only, when James 
speaks of consciousness as actually pre- 



Psychology and Personality 53 

senting itself, to ask to whom does con- 
sciousness present itself, and by whom 
is a plurality of faculties always found in 
consciousness? If consciousness presents 
itself, it must present itself to some sub- 
ject; if a plurality of faculties is always 
found, they must be found by someone. 
Taking the Empirical Self to be, as James 
describes it to be, "the Self of Selves, " 
and granting it to be, as James defines it 
to be, nothing but psychic faculties or 
dispositions, we still, when told that "it 
actually presents itself, " must ask, to 
whom? Thus far all that we have got 
from James is that psychical faculties 
or dispositions are presented. Indeed at 
this point of James's argument we find 
that we have lost something that we 
started with. At the beginning of his 
chapter, James started with the words, 
"A man's self is the sum total of all that 
he can call his." We started, that is to 
say, with what is important in a discus- 
sion of personality, viz., a personal pro- 
noun and a possessive pronoun. But in 
this "abstract way of dealing with con- 



54 Personality 

sciousness" the personal pronouns drop 
out and a plurality of faculties alone is 
left. 

This abstract way of dealing with the 
Spiritual Self indeed reduces the Spiritual 
Self to something impersonal. This " self 
of selves, " this " central nucleus of the 
Self, " James tells us, is felt — by whom he 
does not say. And this central active 
self, this self of selves, he tells us, "when 
carefully examined, is found to consist 
mainly of the collection of [certain] 
peculiar motions in the head or between 
the head and throat.' ' The,, inference 
from, or rather the plain meaning of these 
words is, that the Spiritual Self consists 
of certain peculiar motions. And if so, 
the Spiritual Self seems certainly im- 
personal. But these motions in the head 
or between the head and neck, which 
constitute the Spiritual Self, are felt. 
And if felt, they are felt by someone; and 
they are not the person who feels them. 
If, on the other hand, they are felt by 
nobody, they are feelings which are not 
felt — that is to say, they are a self- 



Psychology and Personality 55 

contradiction. Be this, however, as it 
may, by the Spiritual Self James means 
simply certain motions which are felt in 
the head or between the head and neck. 
He does not mean the subject or person 
who feels them. 

Thus when James has completed his 
analysis of the Empirical Self or Me, and 
has enumerated its constituents, viz., the 
Material Self, the Social Self, and the 
Spiritual Self, he has nowhere found in 
them any subject or person. He has 
found feelings, but nowhere any person 
who has the feelings — thoughts, but no- 
where any subject who thinks them. 
Since then the person or subject who 
thinks and feels is not to be found in the 
Empirical Self or Me, there remains only 
one quarter in which we can look for it, 
and that is, according to James, the sense 
of personal identity. If it is not to be 
found there, we may rest assured that 
the notion of a person or subject is a 
false inference from the facts. The bot- 
tom facts will be thoughts and feelings- 
thoughts which no person thinks and 



■KMM 



56 Personality 

feelings which nobody feels. If, therefore, 
James's argument leads to the conclusion 
that there are unfelt feelings and non- 
existent thoughts, there must be some- 
thing wrong with his argument. Let 
us therefore examine it. 

His argument starts from the sense of 
personal identity. His conclusion is that 
there is neither identity nor personality ; 
there are only passing thoughts. The 
first and indispensable step in his argu- 
ment is to beg the question. In the first 
paragraph of the section on the " Sense of 
Personal Identity' ' he assumes What it is 
his object and his business to prove, viz., 
that a thought can happen or exist with- 
out any thinking subject or person: each 
thought, he says, may think of a multi- 
tude of thoughts. On the next page he 
says: "The thought not only thinks 
[of a present self and a self of yesterday], 
but thinks that they are identical." 
But the whole question at issue is begged, 
when it is thus assumed at the beginning 
that "I" do not think; and it is begged 
without any explanation — yet surely 



Psychology and Personality 57 

some explanation is required, if we are 
expected to believe that our thoughts 
can take place without our thinking 
them. 

The next step in the argument is to 
represent the sense of our own personal 
identity, not as something of which we 
are directly aware, but as a conclusion or 
inference drawn. The sense of our per- 
sonal identity, James says, "is a conclu- 
sion grounded either on the resemblance 
in a fundamental respect, or on the 
continuity before the mind, of the pheno- 
mena compared. " The sense of our 
personal identity, then, is a conclusion, 
and it is a conclusion based on the 
resemblance which certain phenomena 
display when compared together. Cer- 
tain phenomena — certain mental pheno- 
mena — when compared together display 
a resemblance, and from that resemblance 
the conclusion of our personal identity 
is drawn. Further, these phenomena — 
these mental phenomena — are continu- 
ous to the mind, or display "continuity 
before the mind"; and from this con- 



58 Personality 

tinuity again the inference of our personal 
identity is drawn. 

James therefore evidently holds that 
we have no sense of our personal identity, 
if by " sense' ' is meant that we are 
directly aware, or have immediate appre- 
hension, of it. Our personal identity 
simply is not known to us at all: it is a 
pure inference — and a mistaken inference. 
There are phenomena before the mind 
which exhibit resemblance to one another 
and display continuity; and from these 
phenomena, with their continuity and 
resemblance to one another, a conclusion 
is drawn. Then we ask, By whom or by 
what is the inference drawn ? Apparently, 
since the phenomena from which the 
inference is drawn are before the mind, it 
is to the mind that the phenomena are 
presented, and it is by the mind that the 
inference is drawn. James's argument, 
therefore, cannot start without postu- 
lating that there is a mind, that pheno- 
mena are presented to it, and that it 
draws inferences from them, that is to 
say, thinks thoughts about them. In 



Psychology and Personality 59 

other words, our personality is not an 
inference from our thoughts but a con- 
dition without which there would be no 
thoughts. James however imagines that 
our personality is an inference, and that 
it is an inference from the phenomena 
presented to us. If it were an inference 
from the phenomena, if it were an 
inference at all, it would be a mistaken 
inference; and James would be right. 
But it is not an inference from the 
phenomena : it is the subject to whom the 
phenomena are presented. The word 
" phenomenon* ' in itself implies a person 
to whom it is presented or appears: a 
thing which appears to nobody is not a 
phenomenon or appearance at all. There 
can be no phenomena or appearances if 
there is no subject to whom they can 
appear. 

If further proof be wanted to show that 
James does, without knowing it, postu- 
late a subject or person, it can be found in 
his own words. The sense of our personal 
identity, he says, "is grounded on the 
resemblance of the phenomena com- 



60 Personality 

pared." If phenomena are compared 
they must be compared by somebody. It 
is evidently possible to overlook the fact 
that phenomena or appearances can only 
appear to somebody, for James does 
overlook it. But even if we pass that by 
and suppose that phenomena can just 
appear, all by themselves, how can they 
possibly be compared unless some one 
compares them? A subject or person is 
simply indispensable. If nobody makes 
comparisons, no comparisons will be 
made. If nobody draws inferences, no 
inferences will be drawn. > 

It is not however our personality alone, 
but out personal identity which James 
seeks to explain away. He explains it 
away first by substituting resemblance 
for identity; and next by seeking for it 
in the phenomena and not in the mind 
to which the phenomena are presented 
and by which the phenomena are com- 
pared. But, by the very meaning of the 
words, " resemblance' ' is not the same as 
''identity. " Things which resemble one 
another are things which, though they 



Psychology and Personality 61 

resemble one another, are different. If 
they were not different, they would not 
resemble one another: they would be 
identical. When, then, James says that 
the sense of our personal identity is 
grounded on the resemblance of the 
phenomena compared, and argues that 
such resemblance is no good ground for 
inferring identity, the reply is that, 
whether the phenomena compared by the 
mind or person resemble one another or 
not, is an irrelevant consideration. What 
is asserted by the upholders of personal 
identity is not that the phenomena 
presented to the subject or person are 
identical, but that the subject or person 
to whom they are presented and by whom 
they are compared, is identical. 

The case is the same with the continuity 
of the phenomena. According to James 
there is a continuity in the phenomena 
before the mind ; and from that continuity, 
according to James, the false inference is 
drawn, that the person to whom the 
phenomena are presented possesses iden- 
tity or is identically the same person 



62 Personality 

throughout. Now, if continuity in the 
phenomena were the single solitary pre- 
mise given, then personal identity would 
have to be an inference from it ; and then 
we should have to consider whether it 
was a legitimate inference, or, as James 
maintains, a false inference from it. 
But it is not from continuity in the 
phenomena that James starts. It is 
continuity in the phenomena before the 
mind that he starts from, as he says 
himself. And if there is continuity in the 
phenomena before the mind or subject, 
there must be continuity in the mind or 
subject to which the phenomena appear. 
But once more the subject's identity in 
continuity is not an inference from the 
continuity of the phenomena presented 
to the subject or person. It is not in the 
phenomena presented that the subject's 
identity is to be sought or can be found, 
but only in the subject to whom the 
phenomena are presented and by whom 
they are compared. When James says 
that our personal identity "is grounded on 
the resemblance of the phenomena com- 



Psychology and Personality 63 

pared' ' he admits that continuous pheno- 
mena are compared ; but if compared they 
must be compared by some subject or 
person; and the subject or person who 
apprehends and compares continuous 
phenomena must be there all the time; 
and unless it were the same person or self 
who compared them they could not be 
compared at all. 

To James, however, it seems that my 
personality and my personal identity are 
inferences. If he regarded my person- 
ality as an inference from "my" thoughts, 
it would be open to us to say that by 
talking of "my" thoughts he simply 
begged the question, for "my" thoughts 
imply "me," and without "me" there 
could be no thoughts of the kind called 
"mine." It is therefore of the essence 
of his argument to assume the existence 
of thoughts which are not "yours" or 
"mine," but are the thoughts of no 
thinker or person whatsoever. And if 
there are such thoughts, then the infer- 
ence that they are "my" thoughts or 
"your" thoughts, or are the thoughts of 



64 Personality 

any person or thinker whatever, must 
be erroneous; for the assumption from 
which James starts is that the only- 
thoughts that exist or occur are the 
thoughts of no person or thinker at all. 
Accordingly, we have first of all to 
understand how the problem of personal 
identity presents itself, if with James 
we begin by assuming no person or 
thinker whatever. In that case we begin 
by admitting the existence of thoughts, 
and we select for consideration the one 
particular thought of personal identity; 
and we desire to know whether that 
particular thought is correct or not— in 
James's words, " whether it be right or 
wrong when it says, I am the same self 
that I was yesterday. " Now, if the 
proper way to begin is by assuming no 
thinker or person, or self whatever, then 
the thought ought not to make any such 
assumption: it ought to say, "This 
thought is the same thought as it was 
yesterday, " and all we have to inquire 
is whether the thought is right or wrong 
in saying so. And the answer to the in- 



Psychology and Personality 65 

quiry is plain : no thought to-day is iden- 
tical with any of yesterday's thoughts. 
There may be a resemblance between 
them. There can be no identity. And 
James concludes, therefore there can be 
no personal identity. Of course, no 
personality or personal identity can be 
inferred from the premise, "This thought 
is the same as that, " if we begin by stat- 
ing that thought does not imply any 
thinker or person. Evidently therefore 
James does not start from the premise, 
"This thought is the same thought as it 
was yesterday. 7 ' 

The premise he starts from is the one 
he himself lays down in his own words, 
"I am the same self that I was yester- 
day.' ' That is the thought from which 
he starts. The thought may be wrong, 
as James intends to show. But right or 
wrong it is there, and we have got to 
start with it, or else we cannot begin 
discussing it at all. Very good ! then we 
have, to start with, the notions of self, 
or personality, and of personal identity. 
They are not inferences drawn but pre- 



66 Personality 

mises given. And they are premises given 
by the thought which, according to 
James, assumes no person or thinker 
whatever. The very thought which ac- 
cording to James assumes no thinker, 
no "I," asserts personality, declares that 
"I am," and goes on to declare, "I am 
the same person that I was yesterday/' 
It asserts that there is only one "I" 
to-day and yesterday. It denies that 
there was one self yesterday, and that 
there is another self to-day. 

James, however, interprets the words, 
"I am the same self that I was yester- 
day, " to imply that to-day's self, the 
present self, and yesterday's, are different 
selves. And he does so obviously, be- 
cause he identifies "thought" and "self." 
From this identification it follows that 
there are many passing thoughts and 
therefore as many transient selves. 
Hence it is that he can say, "The only 
question for us is as to what consciousness 
may mean when it calls the present self 
the same with one of the past selves 
which it has in mind." That is to say, 



Psychology and Personality 67 

the only question for us is as to what 
consciousness may mean when it calls 
the present thought the same with any 
past thought. And to that question, as 
we have seen, James's answer is that no 
present thought is the same with any 
past thought, though they may have 
some resemblance to one another. Differ- 
ent thoughts cannot have identity; and 
if we admit that a thought, which implies 
no thinker or subject, is, as James says, 
a self, then it will follow that there are 
just as many transient selves as there are 
transitory thoughts; and that there is no 
personal identity because no two thoughts 
can be identical. 

If then with James we assume that the 
given facts, with which we have to start, 
are successive thoughts, without any 
person who thinks them, how are we to 
explain the continuity of thought which 
James admits to exist ? Continuity seems 
to presuppose the unity and identity, the 
personal unity and personal identity, 
which James is anxious to represent as 
an inference and a mistaken inference. 



68 Personality 

Common-sense, as James does not hesitate 
to point out, would drive us to admit 
that there is "a self -same and changeless 
principle" of personal identity running 
through the whole stream of thought. 
How then is James to explain — and 
to explain away — what common-sense 
thus demands? The explanation is very 
simple. "Each thought," James says, 
"dies away and is replaced by another. 
The other, among the things it knows, 
knows its own predecessor, and greets it, 
saying, Thou art mine, and part of the 
same self with me. Each latef thought, 
knowing and including thus the thoughts 
which went before, is the final receptacle 
— and appropriating them is the final 
owner — of all that they contain and 
own." Each thought, then, is cognitive, 
for it knows the thoughts that went be- 
fore; and it is an agent, exercising choice, 
appropriating some of the thoughts that 
went before as its " own, " and repudiating 
others. 

In criticising this it may be well to 
begin by calling to mind that James has 



Psychology and Personality 69 

previously said that there are as many 
" selves" as there are passing thoughts. 
"The only question for us is, " he said, 
what consciousness means by calling 
"the present self the same with one of 
the past selves." He has expressly ex- 
plained that these many fleeting, transi- 
tory selves are not for one moment to be 
confused with the one, personal, identical 
self, which metaphysics and common- 
sense agree in recognising as a fact, but 
which James regards as an inference, and 
a mistaken inference, from facts. Yet, 
now, in the passage just quoted, James 
represents each thought as saying to its 
predecessor, Thou art part of the same 
self with me. Surely, it is clear that if 
each thought is part of the same self, no 
thought is more than part of the self. 
How then can "the passing thought be, " 
as James says that it is, "the Thinker" 
or self? No thought can be the self, if 
each thought is but part of the self. And 
if each thought is but part of the self, no 
thought is the self, and no thought is the 
thinker. "Each thought dies away, and 



70 Personality 

is replaced by another/" as James says, 
but the person who thinks is there all the 
time. Indeed, when James speaks of 
each thought as not only knowing the 
thoughts that went before, but as being 
an agent and exercising choice, he is 
simply personifying each thought. "The 
passing Thought then, " he says, "seems 
to be the Thinker." If so, then the 
stream of thought which passes through 
your mind is a stream of selves or 
thinkers. By personifying thoughts we 
do not get rid of personality, any more 
than the magician's apprentice, by break- 
ing to pieces the broom-stick, got rid of 
the pail of water it was fetching. On 
the contrary, all the pieces fetched pails. 
So too the result of breaking up the unity 
of the self is that we get a self bewitched 
into as many selves as there are thoughts. 
But this embarrassing result is a mere 
piece of magic, which substitutes passing 
thoughts in the place of the identity of 
the thinker. 

It would seem to be quite plain that, if 
the passing thought is the Thinker, then 



Psychology and Personality 71 

there must be as many Thinkers as there 
are passing Thoughts. But it should be 
noticed that James does not seem always 
to hold to this, for he says " our ' Thought ' 
■ — a cognitive phenomenal event in time — 
is, if it exist at all, itself the only Thinker 
which the facts require." These words 
may mean that only one Thinker is 
required by the facts, and not as many 
thinkers as there are passing thoughts. 
But to put such a meaning on the 
words would be wholly inconsistent with 
James's description of the consciousness 
of self, for which he claims, when sum- 
marising it, that it is "unencumbered 
with any hypothesis save that of the exis- 
tence of passing thoughts or states of 
mind." "The consciousness of self, " he 
says, "involves a stream of thought, each 
part of which as 'I' can (1) remember 
those which went before ; and (2) empha- 
sise and care paramountly for certain 
ones among them as 'me' and appro- 
priate to these the rest." The distinction 
which in these words James draws be- 
tween the 'I' and the 'me' is made still 



72 Personality 

more explicit when he goes on to say, 
"This me is an empirical aggregate of 
things objectively known. The / which 
knows them ... is a Thought, at each 
moment different from that of the last 
moment, but appropriative of the latter, 
together with all that the latter called 
its own." And "that Thought," he 
adds, "is itself the thinker. " It is then 
clear from these words that there are, 
according to James's argument, as many 
thinkers as there are moments; and each 
Thinker is different from every other 
Thinker. > 

Now this theory is at least very differ- 
ent from the Common-sense view of the 
self: it does away with the identity of the 
self. The Common-sense view is that 
the self is as it were one continuous, 
unbroken line. James's view substitutes 
for the unbroken line a series of dots, 
each one of which is a thinker or self, and 
every one of which is different from every 
other thinker or self in the row. His 
very first words, in summarising his 
argument, are: "The consciousness of 



Psychology and Personality 73 

self involves a stream of thought. " The 
stream of thought then is what James 
starts from. He chooses to begin, be- 
cause he has to begin, with the stream of 
thought — continuous and unbroken. In 
his very next words, indeed, he abandons 
it: "The consciousness of Self involves a 
stream of thought,' ' he says, "each part 
of which as 'I' remembers" and appro- 
priates those which went before. Thus, 
for the continuous line he substitutes 
parts or dots, for the stream of conscious- 
ness he substitutes disconnected drops. 
Nay! more. When we start, as James 
starts, with the consciousness of Self as 
involving a stream of thought, we start 
with one Self only, continuous and in- 
divisible. That Self is the "I". But 
James divides the stream into drops, the 
line into dots, consciousness into separate 
thoughts; and then says each of those 
dots is a self; there are many selves and 
not the one Self, from the consciousness 
of which we originally started. Perhaps 
therefore it may be suggested that though 
James starts by speaking in his very first 



74 Personality 

words of a stream of thought and the 
consciousness of Self, he did not himself 
understand those expressions to imply 
that the Self was one, or that there was 
any unity in the stream of thought. 
How could he, when all the time he was 
intending to argue that there are as 
many selves as there are drops in the 
stream of consciousness, as many thinkers 
as there are thoughts? If the conclusion, 
which from the beginning he desired to 
reach was that there are many successive 
selves and a plurality of thinkers, then 
from the beginning also the phrases which 
he uses — "a stream of thought," and 
"the consciousness of Self" — must have 
been meant to imply that there was no 
unity in the stream of thought — that 
"each thought," as he says in a passage 
already quoted, "dies away and is re- 
placed by another," in fine, that the 
stream is a series of successive drops. 
But it is impossible to maintain that 
James at the outset of his argument 
denied unity to the stream of thought, as 
he does at the conclusion. On the first 



Psychology and Personality 75 

occasion when he used the metaphor of 
the stream of consciousness he used it 
precisely because it implied unity. He 
said we may speak of " either the entire 
stream of our personal consciousness, or 
the present 'segment' or 'section' of 
that stream, according as we take a 
broader or a narrower view," but in 
either case each is "a unity after its own 
peculiar kind/' It is therefore quite clear 
that what James actually starts from is 
the premise that the entire stream of our 
personal consciousness is a unity. And it 
is equally clear that a river or any other 
stream is not made up of separate drops ; 
that a continuous line is fundamentally 
different from a row of dots; and con- 
sequently that the stream of thought is 
not made up of parts. 

In fine, if our personal consciousness 
is a stream of thought, a unity, and a 
whole, then all that psychology, or psy- 
chological analysis, can do is to attend 
to each of its various phases or parts 
separately. But though the psycholog- 
ist may attend to them separately, the 



76 Personality 

fact that he attends to them separately 
does not give them any separate exis- 
tence. If, as the result of a lifelong 
concentration of attention on the parts 
separately, he forgets that the parts are 
never and nowhere to be found save 
in the whole, the forgetfulness is very 
natural, but it is none the less erroneous. 
It was from the stream of consciousness 
we started, and to it we must return. It 
is useless to say, by psychological analysis 
we have reduced it to drops, therefore it is 
a scientific error to suppose that there is 
or ever was a stream. Indeed, .we may 
even go further. We may say that, if 
the first thing the psychologist has to do 
is to substitute as it were a row of dots 
for the continuous line which is given to 
him in the first instance, all his conclu- 
sions will be separated from truth and 
actual fact by just the difference there is 
between a continuous line and a row of 
dots. Conclusions which hold good of 
the row of dots may not be equally true 
of the continuous line. But that is no 
reason for denying the existence of the 



Psychology and Personality 77 

continuous line. It may be that for the 
purposes of his science the psychologist 
is bound to begin by assuming a series of 
thoughts, each of which "dies away and 
is replaced by another"; it may be that 
for the purposes of his science it is con- 
venient or necessary to assume that each 
thought is a thinker; but, if so, these are 
scientific assumptions. They are not 
the facts with which we start, nor can 
common-sense be expected to accept the 
conclusion that the "I," the subject of 
consciousness, is not one person or thinker, 
but is a series of thinkers, and that at 
every moment each thinker dies away and 
is replaced by another thinker. Moments 
— separate moments — are pure abstrac- 
tions: time is continuous and unbroken. 
And the momentary thinker, for that 
very reason, if for no other, is a pure 
abstraction, scientific — convenient and 
even necessary for scientific purposes — ■ 
but to be found only in the domain of 
science, not in the actual world of fact. 



CHAPTER III 

PERSONALITY AND CHANGE 

Bergson's argument that change alone exists 
and requires no substratum or substance — His 
further arguments that we perceive ourselves, 
that subject and object are distinguished, that 
change is free-will. — The consequence: if we 
are change, then change is self -consciousness and 
implies personality. 

HTHUS far we have made no reference 
* to the theory of Evolution. In the 
first chapter we accepted the theory of the 
Uniformity of Nature, and of the univer- 
sality throughout space and throughout 
time of causes, which uniformly recurred, 
and uniformly produced the same effects. 
From that point of view the object of 
science was simply to ascertain the work- 
ing of these uniform and monotonous 
laws of Nature. They may be properly 
termed monotonous because on this 
scheme Nature works with mechanical 

78 



Personality and Change 79 

regularity, and no variety: the only sound 
which reaches our ears from the mono- 
tonous mechanism is a uniform, regularly 
repeated thud-thud. From the point of 
view of the theory of evolution, however, 
we get a very different conception of the 
universe: the conception we get is that 
the state of the universe at any moment 
is different from its state at any other 
moment that has ever been or will ever 
be. It is indeed at all moments and every 
moment the same universe, otherwise 
there could be no change in it. If it 
changes, it must be there to change. 
Unless it were there all the time, it could 
not change, because it would not be there 
— nothing would be there — to change. 
There would be no changing universe. 
There would be a succession of universes, 
each one of which would at each moment 
"die away and be replaced by another. " 
In place of the continuous, flowing line of 
evolution, we should have a series of dots, 
each separated from the one that pre- 
ceded it by an unbridgeable, unfathom- 
able chasm. Thus, there is resemblance 



80 Personality 

between the universe and the individual. 
Each is a whole, one whole. Each is a 
whole which changes, and which could 
not change, unless it were there all the 
time to change. Each presents both 
change and identity : if there were no iden- 
tity there would be nothing to change, 
if there were no changes there could be no 
identity running through them. About 
your personal identity through all the 
changes you have undergone in the course 
of your life, you have no doubt. It is 
beyond possibility of denial that you have 
changed; and it is equally certain that 
it is you — and nobody else — who have 
undergone those changes. You — and no- 
body else — the same, identical you. 

An analogy, therefore, if nothing more 
than an analogy, may be drawn between 
the changes which make up your growth 
and development and those in which the 
evolution of the world consists. You are 
not a succession of different persons, nor 
is the universe a succession of different 
universes. How far the analogy between 
the world and the individual may be 



Personality and Change 81 

pressed is a matter of doubt and specu- 
lation. You are conscious both of your 
identity through all changes, and of the 
changes through which you go. The 
universe also is identical through all its 
changes. But whether we can say that, 
through all its changes, it is identical 
with itself; whether, that is, we can say 
it is a Self, is another question. If we 
do say so, then we say that in the whole 
universe there is nothing but personality 
to be found — no impersonal things or 
brute matter. The words "in Him we live 
and move and have our being" will be 
literally true for us. "God is a spirit, " 
and the ultimate reality is spiritual, and 
spiritual alone. 

If, then, we take identity to imply Self, 
by its very meaning, and to mean identity 
with Self, we cannot predicate identity 
of the universe without thereby predicat- 
ing Selfhood. If change by its very 
meaning implies something which, or 
some one who, changes, then change and 
identity are terms neither of which can 
be understood without reference to the 



82 Personality 

other. The theory of evolution may 
direct itself primarily, or limit its atten- 
tion wholly, to the changes which take 
place, but it will nevertheless postulate 
the reality of that which changes, and 
therefore the identity of that which 
changes. You, on the other hand, do 
not postulate, you know your own reality 
and identity. You know it from the 
inside, so to speak. And as you are part 
of the universe, you know part of the 
universe from the inside, and not merely 
from the outside — which is the point 
of view from which the evplutionist 
studies it. As it is from the outside that 
the evolutionist approaches it, as it is 
with the changes that he is concerned, he 
may very naturally — if erroneously — 
hold that the changes which he studies 
are not only real, but the whole reality, 
just as on the other hand the student of 
metaphysics, in search of reality, some- 
times falls into the error of dismissing 
change as mere appearance. 

The view that changes are not only real 
but the whole of reality is set forth by 



Personality and Change 83 

the distinguished French philosopher, M. 
Bergson, as the key to the right under- 
standing both of the world and of the 
individual. An analogy, as already said, 
there undoubtedly is between the changes 
which mark or make up your growth and 
development and those in which the 
evolution of the universe consists. If the 
resemblance is not merely seeming but 
real, if the changes of the one are in their 
very nature of the same kind as the 
changes of the other, then that which, 
though it changes, retains its identity 
throughout, must be of the nature of 
personality. But before we can draw 
this inference we are arrested by the 
argument set forth by M. Bergson that 
changes are not only real, but the whole of 
reality — that change, indeed, continuous 
change exists, but nothing else. 

Every change and every movement, he 
says, is indivisible. I move my hand in 
one sweep from A to C. It is one move- 
ment and indivisible. I might indeed 
stop half-way at B and then go on to C. 
But in that case there would be the move- 



84 Personality 

ment from A to B, followed by the move- 
ment from B to C. There would be two 
movements; and those two movements 
are quite different from the one move- 
ment, with never a stop, from A to C. 
The space traversed by the hand may be 
the same, but the one movement from 
A to C is not the same thing as the two 
movements, first from A to B and then 
from B to C. Every movement is one 
and indivisible. 

Movement or motion, it will not be 
doubted, is real. But what, M. Bergson 
asks, what of immobility or motionless- 
ness? If two trains are running side by 
side at the same rate, the passengers in the 
one can converse and shake hands with 
those in the other: relatively to each 
other the two trains are motionless, but 
nevertheless they are moving all the time. 
Suppose, however, they stop? Still they 
are on the earth, and the earth is rotating 
on its axis and revolving round the sun. 
Nothing in the world is or can be motion- 
less. There simply is nothing immobile 
or motionless. Movement, M. Bergson 



Personality and Change 85 

says, is the one reality: "What we call 
immobility is a certain state of things 
identical with, or analogous to, that which 
occurs when two trains travel at the same 
rate in the same direction on parallel 
lines: each of the two trains then appears 
motionless to the travellers seated in the 
other. " Immobility therefore, according 
to M. Bergson, is mere appearance: it is 
the way in which the one train appears to 
the passengers in the other. And, if we 
speak of it as a state, we must remember 
that the state is only an appearance 
and not a reality: the state of the one 
train appears to the passengers in the 
other to be a state of immobility — but 
there is no such state in reality, because 
there is no such immobility — the train is 
moving all the time. 

What M. Bergson has said of move- 
ment is, he maintains, equally true of 
every change. Every real change, he 
argues, is an indivisible change just as 
every movement has been shown to be 
indivisible. We are apt indeed to con- 
sider a change as a series of successive 



86 Personality 

states, that is to say, to consider it as 
divisible, whereas it is indivisible; and to 
suppose that it can be divided into states, 
whereas a state is only an appearance 
and is nothing real. If the continuous 
change, which each one of us calls "my- 
self," is to act on the continuous change 
which we call a "thing," then these two 
changes must be, relatively to each other, 
in a situation analogous to that of the 
two trains already mentioned. When the 
two changes — that of the object and that 
of the subject — take place in these parti- 
cular conditions, they produce/ he says, 
that particular appearance which we call 
a "state." The changes, which are real, 
produce the appearance of a state; and he 
maintains it is just reversing the facts 
to say that the appearance produces 
the change, or that the change which is 
the reality is made up of a series of 
appearances or states. 

In fact, according to M. Bergson, 
"there are changes, but no things which 
change — change requires no substratum 
or substance. There are movements, but 



Personality and Change 87 

not therefore unchanging objects which 
move — a movement does not presuppose 
a moving thing. " M. Bergson illustrates, 
illuminates his argument that movement 
and change are realities in their own 
right, capable of standing by themselves 
and requiring no substratum or substance 
on which to base themselves, by an illus- 
tration from the sense of hearing. When 
we listen to the melody that 's sweetly 
played in tune, what is presented to us is a 
movement, but in the movement there is 
no thing which moves, there is change 
but there is no thing which changes. The 
tune is the change and the change is the 
tune. And the tune, like every other 
movement, is indivisible. Divide it, make 
a pause in the middle of the phrase, and 
you get two phrases each of which is 
different from the undivided phrase. A 
whole is by no means the same thing as 
the parts into which it may be divided. 
It is indivisible. And in this indivisible 
movement there is nothing but change. 
It is change which constitutes the tune. 
In the tune there is nothing but the 



88 Personality 

change: there is not the change and 
something else — the tune and something 
other than the tune. The substance of 
the tune is the tune and nothing else. 

And what is thus true of the tune he 
says is true of every change. If we turn 
to our inner life we shall find that its 
substance is change and nothing else. 
The ordinary theories of personality, how- 
ever, assume on the one hand a series of 
psychological states, and on the other, a 
Self. The Self is represented as a sub- 
stratum or substance, which is a rigid, 
invariable, immutable unity. The psy- 
chological states are a plurality and are 
equally invariable. But how this plural- 
ity or multiplicity can possibly be com- 
bined with that unity, is, M. Bergson 
argues, simply not explained by the 
ordinary theories of personality. The 
truth indeed is, according to M. Bergson, 
that there is no rigid, immutable sub- 
stratum or substance; and that there are 
no distinct states which pass over it in 
the way that actors pass over the stage. 
There is simply the continuous melody 



Personality and Change 89 

of our inner life — a melody which runs 
on, indivisible from the beginning to the 
end of our conscious existence. That, 
and nothing else, is our personality. 

Further, M. Bergson argues, if our 
inner life runs on thus with never a break 
or a stop, because it is, in its very inmost 
nature, movement and change, and there- 
fore indivisible, as is every movement and 
change; then the past cannot be divided 
or cut off as it were by a knife from the 
present. Then what is the present? 
According to M. Bergson, "My present, 
this moment, is the phrase I am engaged 
in pronouncing. And it is so, because I 
am pleased to restrict the field of my 
attention to that phrase. Attention may 
expand or contract.' ' It may narrow 
itself down to the phrase I am uttering, 
or it may extend to the previous phrase, 
or to the one before that, or as far back 
as I will. What is not attended to, what 
is dropped from attention, ceases to be 
present and ipso facto becomes past. 

We may note in passing, that here M. 
Bergson appears to distinguish between at- 



90 Personality 

tention and the phrase which is attended 
to; and that this distinction occurs in 
the continuous melody of our inner life. 
The melody may run on continuously 
like a fugue. But as in a fugue there are 
more parts than one, so in this continuous 
melody of our inner life there are two 
parts — the attention as well as that which 
is attended to. There is not only life but 
attention to life; and, theoretically at 
any rate, such attention might at any 
moment embrace, according to M. Berg- 
son, the whole past history of the con- 
scious person. So that we seem^to have 
the conscious person, his past history, and 
his attention to it — all comprised, even 
though latent and not at first sight 
obvious, in that melody of our conscious 
life which thus seems to be not a simple 
air but a fugue having parts. This seems 
to be again implied when M. Bergson, 
speaking of the difficulty of fully under- 
standing the changes which go on outside 
us, says that to decide the point "it 
would be necessary for us to be inside the 
things in the same way as we are inside 



Personality and Change 91 

ourselves.' ' The implication is that the 
conscious person of whom M. Bergson 
speaks is on the inside of the continuous 
melody of our inner life, attending to its 
various phrases — now to this or that, now 
to this and that. 

But, to resume and conclude this brief 
summary of M. Bergson 's remarks on 
personality — remarks which are scattered 
here and there throughout his works, and 
which have not yet been focussed by him. 
He recognises and adopts the words "sub- 
ject" and " object/ ' By the "subject" 
he explains that he means continuous 
change, the continuous melody of our 
inner life, and that he means nothing else 
or other than the change. By the "ob- 
ject" or the universe as object, he means 
all the other continuous movements or 
changes which go on around us; and he 
does not mean or intend to imply more 
than the changes — there are the changes, 
but there are no "things" which change, 
just as in the case of the subject there is 
change but nothing more — no person who 
changes. In neither subject nor object 



92 Personality- 

is there anything stationary, immobile, 
unchanging. Neither subject nor object 
has states. States, whether psychological 
states, or states of supposed ''things, " are 
but appearance, an appearance wholly 
due to the fact that two movements, like 
two trains, may travel side by side in the 
same direction at the same rate. The 
ultimate principle of reality is an eternity 
of life and movement. In that ultimate 
principle "we live and move and have 
our being." Our being is not something 
static, rigid, immobile. Our very being 
is life and movement. But — let us re- 
member, when M. Bergson tells us this — 
he also tells us that though everywhere 
there is movement, nowhere is there any- 
thing which moves. Change there is, but 
nothing which changes, and (the inference 
seems to be) no one who changes. Life 
there is, but no one it would seem who 
lives. 

At the beginning of VEvolution Crea- 
trice, M. Bergson says: "The existence 
that we are most assured of, and that we 
know the best, is beyond dispute our own. 



Personality and Change 93 

Of all other objects we have notions which 
may be deemed external and superficial, 
whereas we perceive ourselves from the 
inside. " What then, he asks, is the pre- 
cise meaning of the word "exist"? And 
his answer is that to exist is to change. 
Our own existence is change. The exist- 
ence of all other objects is change. If 
then we are change — and nothing else or 
more — how comes it that man imagines 
there are things which change, and per- 
sons who change — nay! who not only 
change, but at the same time maintain 
their own identity? As our notions of 
object may be deemed external and super- 
ficial, we will not inquire whether there 
are things which change. We will con- 
fine ourselves to the existence we are 
most assured of, and that we know the 
best — our own. If we are change — and 
nothing else or more — how comes it, 
according to M. Bergson, that man im- 
agines that there is a person, an "I," a 
self, that through all the changes and 
chances of this mortal life maintains 
its own identity? The notion — according 



94 Personality 

to M. Bergson, the fallacious notion — 
that there is a Self or Me, is, he argues, the 
outcome of the mistaken idea that there 
are states. The truth is, he says, that 
when the continuous change which each 
of us calls ''myself, " moves so to speak at 
the same rate, and in the same direction 
as the continuous change which we call a 
" thing," there arises that particular ap- 
pearance which we call a "state." Two 
trains moving at the same rate appear in 
a state of immobility, though both are 
moving; and neither is in a state of immo- 
bility, for there is no such stq*te, since 
both, ex hypothesis are in motion. But 
one fallacy, M. Bergson says, leads on to 
another. No sooner have we substituted 
the notion of states, and of states that 
follow one another, for the unbroken, 
continuous change that is the reality, 
than we find it necessary to reunite what 
we have sundered. M. Bergson says: 
"As our attention has artificially dis- 
tinguished and separated [these states], it 
is by an artificial bond that it is obliged 
subsequently to reunite them. Conse- 



Personality and Change 95 

quently it imagines a self or me, amor- 
phous and unchanging, on which the 
psychological states that it has converted 
into independent entities may be threaded 
and moved . . . like the different pearls 
of a necklace: it is simply bound to 
imagine a thread ... to keep the pearls 
together. " This thread is concealed by 
the pearls, that is to say, by the psycho- 
logical states: it is that which underlies 
them, the subject or substratum. But, 
says M. Bergson, "in truth this substra- 
tum is not a reality: it is for our con- 
sciousness merely a sign intended to 
remind it perpetually of the artificial 
character of the operation by which 
attention sets one state side by side with 
another, where really there is continuity 
unfolding itself. " 

Thus our attention first imagines states 
— which have no existence — and then 
invents an imaginary "me" to hold 
together these non-existent things: the 
pearls are not real, neither is the thread. 
Both are creations of imagination: it is 
"our attention' ' which artificially sepa- 



96 Personality 

rates them, and artificially reunites them 
by means of an artificial "me." And 
whose work, we may ask, is all this arti- 
ficial proceeding ? It is the work of ' l our' ' 
attention. The continuous change which 
each of us calls "myself, " is the manu- 
factory in which these artificial pearls, and 
the imaginary "me, " are produced. The 
imaginary "me" is the work of "myself. " 
It is the work not of attention in general, 
but of "our" attention. If the "me" is 
artificial, imaginary, unreal, then "my" 
attention must be equally unreal. My 
attention certainly cannot exisj: without 
me, or before me. "I" cannot be an 
inference from my own attention. "At- 
tention" is a word which by its very 
meaning implies not only an object 
attended to, but a subject that attends to 
it. If no object whatever is attended to, 
there can be no attention. If there is 
no subject which attends, there can be no 
attention. Still less can there be any 
attention, if there is neither subject nor 
object. And M. Bergson himself, as we 
have seen, recognises and adopts the 



Personality and Change 97 

terms subject and object. If therefore 
he postulates attention as a fact, and 
admits both a subject and an object of 
attention, how can he maintain that the 
subject is an imaginary "me," which 
attends to non-existent things? It seems 
clear that if the subject and the object of 
attention are non-existent, then attention 
is equally imaginary. And if attention 
is imaginary and non-existent, then M. 
Bergson cannot postulate it as a fact. 

But even if we put aside this objection, 
on the ground that it cannot seem to M. 
Bergson destructive of his position, as it 
does to us ; even if we agree to start from 
an "attention," in which there is neither 
subject that attends nor object attended 
to, attention is a state. And M. Bergson 
declares that there are no states. That 
particular appearance which we call a 
state is merely an appearance and not a 
reality. Attention therefore itself is no- 
thing real, but only an appearance. And 
this conclusion is strictly consistent with 
the idea that the subject of attention is 
an imaginary "me," and the object a 



98 Personality 

non-existent thing. The state, the sub- 
ject, and the object of attention are all 
fallacious inferences. They are all false 
inferences from what M. Bergson postu- 
lates as the one ultimate fact and reality — 
change, continuous change. 

Perhaps, however, it may be felt, and 
perhaps it may be the case, that M. Berg- 
son, though he speaks of attention, would 
decline to allow that there can be any 
" state' ' of attention, inasmuch as he 
expressly declares that " states' ' of any 
kind are mere fictions. His position, it 
may be argued, is that when the^ continu- 
ous change which each of us calls "my- 
self" moves, so to speak, at the same 
rate, and in the same direction as the con- 
tinuous change which we call a "thing," 
there arises that particular appearance 
which we call a state — the state of immo- 
bility. And that state is only appear- 
ance, not fact, because, in fact, or at any 
rate on this hypothesis, there is nothing 
but change postulated. Now, we can 
attend to change, we can watch a process 
taking place ; and we who attend to it are 



Personality and Change 99 

changing — we are growing older — as it 
takes place. If therefore by "state" we 
mean what the word itself implies, viz., 
that a state is something which so long as 
it continues is the cessation or absence of 
change, then it is clear that attention, 
implying as it does change both in that 
which attends and that which is attended 
to, is not a state but is change, through 
and through. There is, we may say, the 
train of moving events to which we attend ; 
and there is the train of attention which 
accompanies them. Now, in the case of 
two railway trains travelling side by side 
at the same speed in the same direction, 
the relations between the passengers and 
the telegraph-poles, the trees, and the 
distant hills are continually changing; 
but the relation between the two trains 
remains the same. And this relation 
which remains the same is every bit as 
real as the other relations which con- 
tinuously change. It is just as true for 
the passengers in the one train to say- 
that the other train is always there, as it 
is for them to say that the things which 



ioo Personality 

they see through the opposite window are 
continuously changing. If change is the 
undoubted fact that we realise when we 
look out of the one window, the absence of 
change when we look out of the other 
window is a fact which it is equally 
impossible to deny. But this latter is 
precisely the fact which M. Bergson does 
deny. He looks out of the one window 
from which is seen continuous change; 
and he refuses to look out of the other 
window from which the opposite of 
change is just as visible. Hence he 
necessarily affirms the one relation, which 
is the only one he sees; and denies the 
other relation, at which he will not look. 
He affirms the reality of the one relation ; 
and simply denies that the other relation 
exists. If only he would look out of the 
window on the other side he would see 
that the relation between the two trains 
is as unchanging, as the relation between 
the train and the telegraph-posts is 
changing. But he says: "No! the rela- 
tion between the train and the telegraph- 
poles, the hedges, the trees, and the hills 



Personality and Change 101 

is one of change ; the only relation possible 
between any two things in the whole 
world is one of change; therefore, if the 
relation between the two trains appears 
not to be the relation of change, it can 
be only an appearance, and not a real 
relation.' ' But yet, earnestly and per- 
sistently though M. Bergson endeavours 
to exclude sameness from the universe, 
or to admit any relation save that of 
change, he does not — indeed, he cannot — 
exclude it from his own argument. To 
establish his own argument he has to 
postulate that the rate at which his two 
trains move is the same. The rate must 
be the same and unchanging, or else his 
whole argument breaks down. Sameness 
and persistence in sameness are the very 
foundation of the argument whereby he 
seeks to prove that the relation of same- 
ness is mere appearance, and that the one 
and only relation is that of change. If it 
is impossible for two trains to move at 
the same rate, his argument cannot begin. 
If their rate can be for a time the same and 
unchanging, his conclusion that change 



102 Personality 

alone is possible cannot be right. But, 
M. Bergson assumes that their rate for a 
time can be the same and unchanging. 
Then, for that time, they are relatively 
to one another in the same unchanging 
"state"; and the "state" is not a mere 
appearance, but a relation just as real as 
the relation of change itself. 

But perhaps it will be said that, though 
the relation of the two trains remains un- 
changed so long as they travel at the same 
rate, nevertheless they are both moving 
all the time — that, though the train of 
continuous change which we call the sub- 
ject may travel as it were at the same rate 
as the train of continuous change which 
we call the object, and so long the re- 
lation between them remains unchanged, 
still the two trains of change are both 
moving all the time, and consequently 
M. Bergson is right after all in saying 
that everywhere there is change. But, in 
the first place, so long as the relation be- 
tween the two trains remains unchanged, 
it is untrue to say that there is nothing 
but change in the world. That is just as 



Personality and Change 103 

untrue as what we may call the "static" 
view of the universe — that the real is 
the unchanging. When M. Bergson re- 
solves existence into change, and says 
that to exist is to change, he is simply 
closing his eyes to half of the fact that has 
to be taken into account. To say that to 
exist is to change is to utter only half of 
the truth: the other and equally import- 
ant half of the truth is that to exist is to 
persist and to remain the same. How a 
thing can change, that is to say, how a 
thing can be and yet not be the same, may 
be difficult alike to explain and to under- 
stand. But the difficulty is neither ex- 
plained nor understood, if we begin by 
denying that the difficulty exists. And to 
say either that change alone exists, or 
that the only reality is that which never 
changes, is simply to say that the diffi- 
culty neither exists nor can exist. It is 
strange indeed, and as bold as it is strange, 
for M. Bergson to cite our own conscious- 
ness as evidence that change exists and 
that sameness or identity is simply 
non-existent. Persistence in change — ■ 



104 Personality 

change which is never complete change 
— is the characteristic and essence of 
our consciousness. Here, if nowhere else 
— or, rather, here as everywhere else — 
existence is neither change alone, nor 
unchanging sameness, but sameness in 
change. It is an identity which does not 
exclude change: a change which does not 
exclude identity. M. Bergson says, in 
words already quoted, that, to under- 
stand the changes that go on outside 
ourselves, "it would be necessary for us 
to be on the inside of things in the same 
way as we are inside ourselves. " , He then 
invites us to descend within ourselves ; he 
bids us consider what we find there; and 
he tells us we find change, continual 
change, and nothing else. What he over- 
looks, or will not see, is that it is "we" 
who find the change that is continually 
going on there. And if I find change 
continually going on there or elsewhere, 
then I must be there all the time. If I 
were not there, I could not find it. If I 
find it all the time, then I must be there all 
the time. And the "IV that finds it there 



Personality and Change 105 

all the time must be the same "I." Un- 
less the same identical "I" were there, it 
could not be conscious that change was 
continually going on. There could be no 
consciousness of change unless there were 
something to contrast it with. And what 
we contrast it with is precisely our own 
identity. Even the changes that go on 
within us would not be changes for us 
unless we had something to measure them 
by, and it is precisely by reference to 
our personal identity that we do mea- 
sure them. It is only by reference to 
something unchanging that we can be 
conscious of change. 

When, then, in our desire to understand 
what change, as it occurs outside us, 
really is, we follow M. Bergson's advice, 
and look within ourselves, we find that 
it involves a contrast with our personal 
identity, and that only by contrast with 
identity can change have any meaning. 
That this is the consequence which logi- 
cally and inevitably flows from the 
premises, is confirmed — were confirma- 
tion necessary — by the fact that M. Berg- 



106 Personality 

son proceeds to deny the premises, even 
though they were his own. It was he who 
originally said, "The existence we know 
the best is our own/ 9 and who, in those 
words, admitted that we do exist — ■ 
admitted not only that there is conscious- 
ness or attention, but that we are con- 
scious and that we attend. It was he 
who said, "We perceive ourselves from 
the inside. ' ! True ! M. Bergson proceeds 
to argue that our existence is a false 
inference from the premises. But our 
existence is not an inference from the 
premises at all — it is itself the premise: 
"the existence we know the best is our 
own." We don't infer it then. We 
know it — and that, according to M. 
Bergson himself. 

If it be argued that M. Bergson's point 
is to show that existence is change, and 
not that we do not exist, then our reply 
has already been given: change is a 
relative term, intelligible, like every other 
relative term, only by reference to its 
correlative, viz., identity. 

But M. Bergson's point seems to be 



Personality and Change 107 

that " we ' T do not exist. He starts indeed 
by conceding that "we perceive ourselves 
from the inside' ' — that we are conscious 
and that we attend. But he only makes 
this concession for the purpose of ulti- 
mately showing that it is untrue. His 
ultimate objective from the start is to 
show that everywhere there is change, 
continual change; and he seems to imply 
that there are no persons who change; 
just as according to him there is move- 
ment, but there are no things which move. 
The only question is whether, starting 
from the premises that we perceive our- 
selves from the inside, that we are con- 
scious and that we attend, it is possible 
to prove that we do not exist. Of course, 
it is not. What M. Bergson does is, at a 
certain point in his argument, simply to 
drop the "we." He begins by saying 
"we attend," but he goes on to speak 
simply of "attention." And eventually 
he reaches the conclusion that "atten- 
tion" can be paid to what is going on, 
without being paid by any person what- 
ever. Just as he has persuaded himself 



108 Personality 

that there is movement but no things 
which move, so he seems to assume that 
there is attention but nowhere any per- 
son who attends — that there is change 
but nowhere any person who changes. 

Whether these assumptions are correct 
or not — whether indeed they have any 
meaning or not — at any rate they cannot 
be inferences from the premises that 
"we perceive ourselves from the inside, " 
that "the existence that we are most 
assured of, and that we know the best is 
beyond dispute our own. " They are not 
inferences from those premises but are 
contradictory to them. If M. Bergson 
admitted that "we attend' ' or that "we 
change, " he would admit — and would be 
bound by the admission — that in addi- 
tion to attention there is the person who 
attends, that over and above — or, if you 
will, underlying — the change is the sub- 
ject who changes. But that is precisely 
what M. Bergson does not admit, and 
therefore cannot be bound by. His 
position is that there is change, and that 
there is attention — which is in its essence 



Personality and Change 109 

change — but more or other than atten- 
tion there is nothing. 

It is of the greatest importance to real- 
ise that this is M. Bergson's position, for 
on it is based his method of unifying the 
universe and of comprehending evolution. 

M. Bergson's unification of the universe 
consists in viewing every so-called thing 
and every so-called person in it as simply 
continuous change. What I call "my- 
self " I find to be continuous change and 
nothing more: when, in his words, "we 
perceive ourselves from the inside, " we 
find nothing but continual change, and the 
change we find is ourselves — "we" are 
but change; "our" inner life is a continu- 
ous melody, which runs on, indivisible 
from the beginning to the end of our 
conscious existence. To understand the 
changes that go on outside ourselves, 
"it would be necessary," M. Bergson 
says, "for us to be on the inside of things 
in the same way as we are inside our- 
selves. " But though this would seem to 
be impossible, the fact remains, according 
to M. Bergson, that outside ourselves 



i io Personality 

there are no things, just as inside our- 
selves there is no person, but only change. 
Within and without there is continuous 
change, and nothing but change. All 
beings are change, all being is change. 
Thus is the universe unified by M. 
Bergson. 

But at the same time that it is thus 
unified it is depersonalised — or at any 
rate we are depersonalised. But though 
we are depersonalised we are not reduced 
to things, because according to M. Berg- 
son, if there are no persons, neither are 
there things. There are neitjier things 
nor persons: there is only continual 
change. There is the continuous change 
which, for some reason that M. Bergson 
never explains, the subject calls "myself." 
And there are other continuous changes 
which I, the subject, call object. And 
when M. Bergson thus admits or rather 
postulates this difference — which he does 
not explain — between subject and object, 
it may be supposed that after all he has 
not succeeded in unifying his universe, but 
on the contrary has sundered it into two: 



Personality and Change in 

the change which is subject cannot be the 
change which is object, for they are two 
changes; neither can the subject be the 
same as the object, for " sameness' ' or 
"identity" is, as we have seen, not ad- 
mitted by M. Bergson to exist in his 
universe where change alone is found. 
But the chasm does not exist for M. Berg- 
son, or is bridged over by him. If the 
change he postulates were merely change, 
the gap between the continuous change 
which the subject calls "myself" and the 
continuous change which he calls "ob- 
ject," might be one impossible either to 
cross or to ignore. But the change he 
postulates as the one reality everywhere 
is will, free-will, or the way in which free- 
will expresses and displays itself. Change 
— whether it be the change which each of 
us, for some reason not explained by M. 
Bergson, calls "myself," or whether it 
be the changes which we erroneously 
call "things" — is in both cases the way 
in which will manifests itself. Further, 
that continuous change is what we call 
evolution. And, as continuous change 



ii2 Personality 

means the continual bringing forth 
of something new, which has never 
before existed, evolution is incessant 
creation : it is free-will continually unfold- 
ing itself. Thus, after all, M. Bergson's 
universe is unified, for it is as he has said 
all along continual change, or evolution; 
that is to say, it is incessant creation; 
and that creation which is constantly 
going on is the same, whether it is the 
change which is called "self" — subject — 
or whether it is the change which is called 
object, for the continual change, the in- 
cessant creation, is in both cases free-will 
continually unfolding itself. 

But we must not travel further than 
M. Bergson's premises and definitions per- 
mit. The free-will which he discovers 
everywhere is not the free-will of a person, 
if persons in M. Bergson's universe really 
are as non-existent as things. Again, the 
free-will, or the kind of free-will to which 
he limits himself strictly, is one which 
foresees nothing, for the simple reason 
that nothing which it produces can be 
foreseen. Nothing it produces can be 



Personality and Change 113 

foreseen, because everything which it 
displays as it unfolds itself is absolutely 
new — a new creation. History does not 
repeat itself. That is why it cannot be 
foreseen. And that is as true of the 
history which we call the evolution of the 
universe as it is of the history of a nation. 
If, therefore, nothing of what M. Berg- 
son's kind of free-will displays, as it 
unfolds itself, can be foreseen, then 
nothing of what M. Bergson's kind of 
free-will displays can be intended. As 
regards the future, free-will, as defined by 
M. Bergson, is blind. It attends indeed 
to the present and to the past. To the 
future it cannot attend, for the simple 
reason that the future is non-existent, and 
what does not exist cannot be seen or 
foreseen. As, therefore, there is and can 
be no beacon visible ahead by which to 
steer or for which to make, the course of 
evolution is not a direct course to any 
point. It is not a course at all. It is not 
directed to any point. It is not directed 
at all, but, as M. Bergson says, it is 
dispersive. He compares its course to 

8 



ii4 Personality 

that of an explosive shell fired from a 
mortar. The shell bursts and discharges 
a multitude of other shells, each one of 
which in its turn bursts and discharges 
yet more shells, and so ad infinitum. The 
rush of the shells from the mortar is in 
no one direction, but in a multitude of 
directions, none of which can be foreseen 
or predicted, for the action of free-will 
is absolutely imprevisible. The rush of 
life may start from some one point, but it 
is not directed to any one point or goal or 
purpose: it scatters, widely and ever more 
widely as it goes. , 

Thus, by means of the theory of evolu- 
tion we reach a conclusion very different 
from that arrived at by those who as- 
sumed that Nature is uniform, and that 
there is a uniform law of causation, work- 
ing with the uniform regularity of a 
monotonous mechanism. The essence of 
that view of the universe is that Nature 
works with monotonous regularity and no 
variety whatever: Nature is a whole and 
has unity indeed on that view, but it is a 
mechanical whole, and from the unity of 



Personality and Change 115 

its working there are no departures — such 
departures would be miracles — variety 
there can be none, where uniformity 
alone is possible. To this view of the 
universe M. Bergson's theory of evolu- 
tion is diametrically opposed. In creative 
evolution M. Bergson finds everywhere 
nothing but variety. The essence of 
evolution is continuous change. In the 
place of unity accordingly we get con- 
tinuity; in the place of identity, change. 
There is movement and change, but there 
are no things which move, and, it would 
seem, no persons who change. The very 
term " person' ' implies identity; and in a 
universe which consists of change there is 
no place for either identity or personal 
identity, save as mere appearance and 
false inference. If then the very con- 
ception of identity must be excluded 
from a universe, which not merely in- 
cludes movement and change, but ac- 
tually is nothing but movement and 
change, then it is by the category of 
change alone that the action of free-will 
can be properly understood, or under- 



n6 Personality 

stood at all. There can be no unity of 
purpose or identity of action where 
change has solitary domain. Free-will, 
to be free, cannot subserve any one pur- 
pose or end. It cannot have any unity 
or display any identity. 

Consequently and consistently M. Berg- 
son, though he postulates consciousness 
and free-will, does not combine them, or 
admit that they can be combined, in a 
unity — still less in a personality. Our 
inner life he compares to a melody, and a 
melody he declares to be continual change. 
But from this very comparison, it is clear 
that our inner life has a unity of its own, 
just as every melody has its unity. It is 
one melody as being different from every 
other melody; and it is one as being the 
melody which it is. Doubtless in the 
melody there is continual change; but 
unless it also had unity it would not be a 
melody at all. And to say that this 
continual change differs from that con- 
tinual change is to regard each as one. A 
melody, any melody, is a unity — a unity 
in change, a unity of change — but none 



Personality and Change 117 

the less a unity identical with itself and 
different from every other tune. When 
M. Bergson speaks of the continual 
change which each one of us calls "my- 
self, " he admits by his very words that 
each such change, each change called a 
self, is thereby distinguished from all 
other such continuities of change. It is 
distinguished. Its unity is thereby ad- 
mitted — and also its difference from all 
other selves. Unless it be one such 
continuity of change it cannot be dis- 
tinguished from others. The change 
which each of us calls "myself" could 
not be called "myself" unless it were, to 
begin with, a unity different and dis- 
tinguishable from all other such unities. 
Further, the unity of change which is 
called "myself" is called so by somebody. 
And there is only one being in the whole 
world who can call it "myself." And I 
who call the change "myself" must be 
there to do so. I am the unity in change, 
and the unity of change; and I am con- 
scious not only of the continuity of 
change, as M. Bergson says, but also of 



n8 Personality 

its unity, and of the fact that it is not any 
other continuity of change — that I am 
not the continuity of change to which 
you apply the term " self . " 

Perhaps it will be felt that, however 
convincing the argument just advanced 
may be found by those who believe to 
begin with in personality, and who are 
satisfied that they themselves exist, it 
cannot appeal to those who hold, with 
M. Bergson, that the existence of persons 
or selves is a matter which must be proved 
before it can be accepted. In reply to 
this we might indeed well ask/ ''Proved 
to whom? and by whom? Surely the 
objection itself assumes that there is a 
person by whom it can be proved and a 
person by whom the proof can be ac- 
cepted?" But let us not insist on this 
reply. Let us consider the matter from 
the point of view of M. Bergson's own 
premises. His position is that everywhere 
there are continuities of change. Of those 
continuities of change there is one which 
is called indeed " myself, " and which 
stands to other continuities of change in 



Personality and Change 119 

the relation of subject to object. Now, if 
M. Bergson admitted that the continuity 
of change called "myself " were really a 
self and a person, that it constituted a 
unity and possessed an identity, he would 
be faithless to his own first principles. 
The continuity of change which is called 
11 myself " would not only be called, it 
would be, a Self — throughout its con- 
tinuity it would be a unity possessing or 
manifesting identity. But, it will be re- 
membered, that is precisely what M. 
Bergson denies : a self running through the 
continuity of change is, according to M. 
Bergson, a purely imaginary thread, 
superfluously imagined, because the con- 
tinuity of change requires nothing to 
hold it together. Its cohesion is guar- 
anteed by its very definition: a change 
which is defined as continuous is a change 
which by its definition coheres. No ' l self ' ' 
therefore is required to hold it together. 
The continuity of change is what each 
of us calls " myself, " but it is not a 
"self" — that is only a word or name — 
it is continuous change and nothing else. 



120 Personality 

The subject is continuous change; and 
its objects are continuities of change. 
Everywhere there are continuities of 
change; and nowhere is there anything 
else. That seems to be M. Bergson's 
position. All, then, that remains for 
him to do is to explain why this one 
particular continuity of change, which we 
will call A, is "me" — and all the other 
continuities of change are not-me. What 
is that difference between the particular 
continuity of change A, and all the other 
continuities, B, C, D, etc., which is 
implied by the term "me"? "To say 
that there is no difference is vain. To 
admit that the difference is real is to 
admit that personality is real — to admit 
both that "I" am different from the 
not-me, and that "I" am "I" — a unity, 
and a personal unity, identical with itself. 
Let us however look once again at M. 
Bergson's position. It is that the con- 
tinuous change which each of us calls 
" myself " is indeed a continuity of change 
but not a unity. About the reality of 
will — free-will — and the reality of con- 



Personality and Change 121 

sciousness he has no doubt or difficulty; 
each of them is change, continuous 
change; and so in neither is there any- 
thing repugnant to or inconsistent with 
that continuity of change which alone he 
postulates. He would not of course deny 
that free-will and consciousness go to- 
gether. What he does deny apparently 
is that, when they go together, there is 
in addition to them, or underlying them, 
any such third reality as personality. If 
in criticism of this we take two continui- 
ties of change, A and B, and say that each 
of them, to be compared and contrasted 
with the other, must be a unity, and that 
unity a personal unity, his reply is that 
if we look into that unity we shall never 
find anything more in it than what he has 
already pointed out, viz., free-will and 
consciousness. The best answer to M. 
Bergson's argument is one that was 
given long ago by a Hindu philosopher 
in discussing personality, and which was 
in substance as follows: Take any unity 
or whole, break it up into its constituent 
parts, point out that the parts exist but 



122 Personality 

that the whole does not, and you have a 
proof — of a sort — that the parts are real 
and that the whole is not a reality. The 
Hindu illustration of this process is: 
There is a chariot, apparently a reality. 
But of what does it really consist? Of 
the body, wheels, and pole. They are the 
only realities to be found in what each of 
us calls a chariot. There is nothing else 
in the chariot. They are real, but the 
chariot is not. It is patently absurd to 
say that in addition to the body, wheels, 
and pole, there is a fourth thing, called a 
chariot. There is no such thing. It is 
simply a false inference, a mistaken in- 
ference, from the facts. It is an imagin- 
ary substratum, supposed to underlie the 
parts and hold them together. Now, we 
may venture to suggest, M. Bergson's 
argument is open to exactly the same 
criticism as this demonstration of the 
non-existence and unreality of the chariot. 
The starting-point in the one case is what 
each of us calls "myself," in the other 
what we call a chariot. If we look into 
the one, we are told, we shall find nothing 



Personality and Change 123 

but pole, wheels, and body; if we look 
into the other we are told we shall find 
nothing but free-will and consciousness. 
We shall not find any substratum under- 
lying the pole, wheels, and body ; and we 
shall not find any subject underlying 
free-will and consciousness. As therefore 
there is no substratum underlying the 
wheels, pole, and body, there is no 
chariot. And as there is no subject 
underlying free-will and consciousness, 
there is no person: what each of us calls 
1 ' myself " is just as non-existent as what 
each of us calls a chariot. 

Of course, the plain fact is that if there 
were no chariot to start with, it could not 
be pulled asunder into body, pole, and 
wheels. And if the "me" did not exist 
to start with, it could not be discriminated 
into free-will and consciousness. To say 
that because in a chariot we can discrimi- 
nate pole, wheels, and body, therefore 
there is no chariot, is exactly parallel to 
the argument that, because in the "me" 
we can discriminate consciousness and 
free-will, therefore the ' ' me f ' does not exist. 



124 Personality 

The truth is that it is impossible to 
resolve the "me" into something else 
which is not me. If the something else 
is not "me, " it is not me — and I have not 
been resolved into it. 



CHAPTER IV 

PERSONALITY AND INDIVIDUALITY 

No individual, in the sense of a closed system, 
exists either for science or in society — Persons 
are not closed systems but are subjects presented 
to objects, and objects presented to other sub- 
jects — The principle of unity which holds persons 
together is love, and "love is the mainspring of 
logic, " "the impulse towards unity" (Bosan- 
quet), but towards unity with one's neighbour 
and one's God. 

\T0 one, we may suppose, will doubt 
* ^ or deny that changes take place. 
Every one will admit that changes do 
take place both within us and without us. 
Of the things of this world, at least, it may 
be truly said that " nothing abideth long 
in one stay. " But though the occurrence 
of change will be universally admitted, 
there may not be, and indeed there is not, 
the same universal agreement as to the 
direction of change. There may be and 

125 



126 Personality 

there is difference of opinion as to whether 
change is dispersive always, or is in the 
long run towards unity and coherence. 
If everything is constantly changing, then 
the direction of change must itself be 
altering at every moment; and in that 
case, if changes are in no one direction, 
they cannot be in the long run directed 
towards unity and coherence. 

How then are we to determine the 
question whether change is in the long 
run towards unity and coherence or is 
dispersive always? 

But perhaps the first thing po ask is, 
Does it matter how it is answered? 

Well, of course, in some of the changes 
that go on around us, we are obviously 
interested. And we may be interested 
in the changes that go on within us. 
Some of them may be of a kind and 
tendency that we do not at all care about. 
And from that point of view there is some 
consolation in the reflection that every- 
thing changes. 

On the other hand, some of the changes 
that take place in us or around us may be 



Personality and Individuality 127 

of a kind or in a direction that we approve, 
and which we could wish to be continued 
— as one does every time one sets oneself 
once more to follow the path of righteous- 
ness. There seems then to be some 
interest in the question whether the 
direction of change is itself always chang- 
ing and dispersive, or whether it is in 
the long run in some particular direction 
that we approve of. 

Then, if the question has some interest, 
how are we to answer it? Where are we 
to look for an answer? Within us or 
without? 

Outside, the process which takes place 
is the process of evolution. It is ad- 
mittedly a process of change; and, at any 
rate as regards the evolution of living 
organisms, that process has been one of 
differentiation and dispersion. 

For instance, from their common an- 
cestor the archseopteryx, the innumerable 
species of birds and of reptiles have 
widely diverged. M. Bergson's simile of 
the shell, which, discharged from the 
mortar, bursts into a thousand shells, 



128 Personality 

each of which again bursts into thousands 
of others, and so ad infinitum, sets before 
us a vivid picture of what he means by- 
speaking of the rush of evolution as dis- 
persive. And M. Bergson, it will be 
remembered, holds that the motive force, 
as it were, which is at work in this con- 
tinual change, or rather which is itself 
this continual change, is will; and that 
will is free because, or in the sense that, 
this continual change is ever changing — 
it never repeats itself and never follows 
any one direction — it is dispersive ever. 

But, it may be inquired, is it really true 
that in our experience we never come 
across anything but change? That there 
is no repetition either in what we do or in 
what we meet with? Is there no regu- 
larity in what we do, and no monotony 
whatever in our lives? Is the future so 
entirely subject to change that we can 
never foresee anything? Can eclipses 
not be foretold? Is the uniformity of 
nature, is the law of cause and effect, an 
entire delusion? 

M. Bergson is not prepared to go that 



Personality and Individuality 129 

length. Nor does he feel compelled to go 
so far by his own view that the rush of 
evolution, which is the movement of free- 
will, is never towards unity and coherence, 
but is dispersive ever. The upward rush 
of evolution may indeed be compared to 
that of a fountain of water which rises, 
and as it springs aloft diverges in innumer- 
able different directions. But all the time 
the fountain plays and rises, the drops of 
water are falling, gravitating uniformly 
and directly towards the earth. In the 
upward rush and soar you have the free- 
dom of the will ever changing and diverg- 
ing; in the downward fall, regular, direct, 
monotonous, and uniform, you have the 
very opposite of freedom and diversity — 
you have the Uniformity of Nature, the 
regularity of cause and effect, the regular- 
ity of human nature, that is to say, cus- 
tom, and habit, from which the freedom 
of the will has died away. Some of us 
are settling down into habits and have 
become the creatures of custom. The 
upward rush and soar of life — the elan de 
la vie — has died away, our freedom gone. 



130 Personality 

Freedom is change; and how difficult is 
change for us! 

Such is the contrast which M. Bergson 
pictures between life, which is continuous 
change, instinct with free-will, ever differ- 
entiating, diverging, dispersing, and the 
uniformity — whether of nature or of 
human nature — from which life and free- 
dom have disappeared. 

But the picture is not true. For the 
Uniformity of Nature in the logical sense 
of the term, in the sense in which Mill held 
it to constitute a logical principle, M. 
Bergson has substituted the Uniformity 
of Nature "in the popular and prima facie 
sense, disclaimed by logicians, that 'the 
future will resemble the past' — that the 
procedure of nature is regular, is a mode 
of repetition' ' (Bosanquet, Individuality 
and Value , p. 83), whereas "the Law of 
Uniformity in the logical sense of the 
term, means rational system, such that 
all changes and differences are relevant 
to one another' ' (ib., p. 84). 

As a matter of fact and of observation 
it is never found that the future exactly 



Personality and Individuality 131 

resembles the past: nowhere in the pro- 
cedure of nature is the future a mere 
repetition of the past. The Uniformity 
of Nature is not a mere mechanical 
process of gravitation, a downward fall, 
regular, direct, monotonous, and uniform; 
but a rational system, in which there are 
changes and differences, and those changes 
and differences relevant to one another. 
It is only by taking the Uniformity of 
Nature "in the popular and prima facie 
sense, disclaimed by logicians," that M. 
Bergson is enabled to picture it as a move- 
ment mechanical rather than rational, as 
a downward fall rather than a movement 
upwards and onwards. 

And as M. Bergson fails to see the 
rational nature of the Law of Uniformity, 
so he similarly misconceives the nature of 
change and the freedom of the will. Just 
as he conceives the Uniformity of Nature 
to be a process marked by mechanical 
uniformity and by exemption from change 
and difference, so he conceives the free- 
dom of the will to consist exclusively of 
change and difference, and its movement 



132 Personality 

to be purely dispersive. Just as, accord- 
ing to M. Bergson, the Uniformity of 
Nature knows no change or difference, so, 
according to him, the freedom of the will 
knows nothing but change and difference. 
It is, of course, as every one of us from 
personal knowledge knows, false to say 
that we can never of our own free-will 
strive twice in the same direction or 
towards the same end. It is therefore 
an error to say that the freedom of the 
will excludes everything but change and 
difference. And that error is comple- 
mentary to the other error of saying that 
the Uniformity of Nature is such that it 
cannot include change and difference. 
These two errors seem to be combined by 
M. Bergson when he represents evolution 
as the upward rush of the fountain in 
directions ever changing and ever more 
and more divergent ; and the Uniformity 
of Nature as a regular, monotonous fall, 
marked by the entire absence alike of 
reason and change. The truth is that 
the Uniformity of Nature is a rational 
system, in which there are changes and 



Personality and Individuality 133 

differences, relevant to one another; and 
freedom of the will, so far from being pure 
change, ever more and more dispersive 
and divergent, ''lies in the direction to- 
wards unity and coherence' ' (Bosanquet, 
p. 326). 

This chapter started from the admitted 
fact that change takes place, and from 
the question whether the direction of 
change is itself always changing. For an 
answer to this question we may look 
either within ourselves or without. If we 
look outside ourselves and observe the 
Uniformity of Nature, we find not the 
dead monotony of a mechanical system, 
which is all that M. Bergson finds there, 
but a rational system in which all changes 
and differences are relevant to one an- 
other. That is to say, there are changes 
and differences, even though the tenden- 
cies be towards uniformity. The tend- 
encies towards uniformity are indeed 
sufficient, and sufficiently reliable, to 
enable man to cope to some extent with 
the future. They are not sufficient to 
overcome his ignorance of what a day 



134 Personality 

may bring forth. We none of us know 
what may happen to us in a day, an hour, 
or even a minute. How much less can 
we pretend therefore to predict or to com- 
prehend the course of the universe as we 
look out upon it, and to decide whether its 
course and direction is or is not always 
changing. 

It remains then to look within ourselves. 
And we may with the more confidence 
direct our gaze within, if we remember 
that we are part of the universe; and 
consequently when we look within our- 
selves we are looking into the universe — 
it may be into the very foundation and 
reality of the universe. If, as Plato says, 
"God holds the soul attached to him by 
its root," then by descending into the 
depths of the soul we may find Him as 
surely there as in the universe without; 
and, finding Him, we may be content — 
with Plato — to "dismiss the starry 
heavens." 

Then let us look within — to our inner 
life. But to the inner life of ourselves as 
persons or as individuals? Not as indi- 



Personality and Individuality 135 

viduals, for if by "individual" we mean 
somewhat absolutely self -existent, and 
cut off from everything else, we mean 
what does not exist. As Professor Pringle- 
Patterson says: "If a mere individual, 
as we are often told, would be a being 
without consciousness of its own limita- 
tions — a being therefore which could not 
know itself as an individual — then no 
Self is a mere individual. We may even 
safely say that the mere individual is a 
fiction of philosophic thought. " Profes- 
sor Pringle-Patterson, however, goes on to 
say: "It is none the less true that each 
self is a unique existence, which is per- 
fectly impervious, if I may so speak, to 
other selves — impervious in a fashion of 
which the impenetrability of matter is 
a faint analogue. The self, accordingly, 
resists invasion; in its character of self 
it refuses to admit another self within 
itself. ' ' But it is just this imperviousness, 
of which Professor Pringle-Patterson 
speaks, this impermeability, which is 
implied by the term individuality, and 
which must lead those who postulate it 



136 Personality 

either to solipsism or to the conclusion 
that there is but one individual and one 
being — the Absolute. 

Before, however, considering the conse- 
quences to which the postulate leads, let 
us consider the postulate itself. What 
is postulated by the term "individual" is 
somewhat self -existent, not dependent on 
any other thing or person, but existing 
independent, in its own right, of every- 
thing else. Now in the world of living 
creatures there plainly is no creature 
"individual" in this sense. The organ- 
ism of the offspring is a continuation 
of the parent organisms. If the parent 
organism were absolutely and perfectly 
individual and indivisible, then no part 
of it could be detached or live separately 
from it. The relation of parent to child 
would be a non-existent and impossible 
relation. The offspring is the reproduc- 
tion of the parents — the constitution of 
an organism which is new only in the sense 
that it is the offshoot of an older organism. 
On the physical side, therefore, there is no 
"individual" in the sense of a closed 



Personality and Individuality 137 

system, having no relation to any other 
individual whatever. On the contrary 
all organised beings are related and akin. 
We are indeed apt to forget the relation- 
ship; and yet we cannot deny that "he 
prayeth well who loveth well both man 
and bird and beast. " 

But, leaving the physical side, let us 
inquire whether elsewhere we find any 
"individual" who is a closed system, 
absolutely cut off, impervious, imperme- 
able, impenetrable. There is none such. 
It is only by mutual co-operation, as 
members of a system, as members of one 
another, that we can live together, or 
can live at all. No man liveth to himself 
alone. If he did, or could, so live, then 
he would indeed be no member of a society 
or system, but himself a closed system, 
cut off from all others, and impervious to 
them. It is precisely this idea that each 
of us is thus individual which leads to the 
notion, the monstrous notion, that it is 
physical force which holds society to- 
gether. Such a notion would be alike 
monstrous and absurd it if were applied 



138 Personality 

not to persons but to physical organisms. 
It would be patently absurd to say that it 
is physical force, from the outside, which 
holds the parts of a physical organism 
together, and gives them their unity. A 
physical organism is not a machine made 
by putting this part and that together, 
and welding them together by force. It 
is from the beginning of its existence a 
unity. And though from the beginning 
to the end of its existence as a physical 
organism it is a unity, it is never at any 
time a closed system. Throughout its 
history, in order simply to live* and go on 
living, it must draw upon its environment, 
and take up into its own unity that which 
is outside itself. And that it could not 
do if it were a closed system. If it were 
an "individual," impervious and imper- 
meable, it simply could not go on living. 
And this process, whereby it maintains 
its life and its unity, is no application of 
physical force from the outside. If then 
it is obviously and patently absurd to 
suppose that the unity of the physical 
organism is the result of physical pres- 



Personality and Individuality 139 

sure, if it is not physical pressure which 
creates or maintains the unity of the 
physical organism, how much more mon- 
strous is it to suppose that it is physical 
force which holds the members of a 
society together, or is the bond of union 
between them? If the members of a 
society were absolutely impervious and 
impermeable, if they were so many closed 
systems, so many "individuals, " in a 
word, then indeed only by physical force 
could they be driven together. And that 
is why those who believe that we are 
11 individuals' ' are obliged to have re- 
course to the notion, the futile notion, 
that it is physical force which holds 
society together. A society is not a 
mere aggregate of "individuals, " placed 
side by side, any more than a physical 
organism is a mere collection of parts or 
members or limbs put side by side. Just 
as a heap of cannon balls may be put 
together in the shape of a pyramid, but 
can never, so long as each retains its 
individual spherical form, assume the 
shape and unity of one single sphere; so 



140 Personality 

if you choose to start by assuming the 
existence of " individuals,' ' who are not 
members of one another, but so many 
closed systems, you can never — no mat- 
ter how much physical force you suppose 
applied to them — account for society. 
11 Individuals" they will remain, if they 
were really individual to start with. 
Members of one another and of society 
they can never become. The mere exist- 
ence of society then is enough to show 
that there are within it no " individuals, " 
no systems, closed, impervious, and 
impermeable. 

What then is it which is the principle 
of unity that holds together the members 
of society as members of one another? 
If it is only in society and by mutual co- 
operation that we can live together or 
live at all, what is the bond of union 
whereby we live, on which our very life 
depends? What holds us thus together, 
is trust in each other, rising into love for 
one another. If we could not trust one 
another, society would fall at once to 
pieces. It is just so far as engagements 



Personality and Individuality 141 

made can be relied on that society holds 
together, and that life for each one of us 
is made possible. For every necessary of 
life we are dependent upon others, who 
may be growing corn, planting tea, rear- 
ing cattle, in far-distant quarters of the 
globe. Engagements may be broken, and 
are broken; nevertheless we rely, and 
rightly rely, upon a man to keep his 
word. We trust one another; and in the 
vast majority of cases our confidence 
proves well placed. The mere existence 
of society proves that our trust is justified : 
if it were not, there would be no society. 
It is true there are people whom we 
find we cannot trust, whom there are 
very few to trust. Such people are on 
the way to becoming "individuals, " 
closed systems, and are apt to be regarded 
as fit only to be segregated, susceptible 
only to force and to compulsion from 
without. But though they are on the 
way to becoming " individuals,' ' though 
in each of them the self is tending to pass 
into selfishness, though it is just so far 
as the tendency towards individualism, 



142 Personality 

towards selfishness, prevails, that society 
tends to go to pieces, still the process is 
never completely carried out. Even 
among thieves there is honour: they 
hold together for the time; and they hold 
together precisely so long and so far as 
they can trust one another. That is 
the only bond of union capable of holding 
men together. " A house divided against 
itself cannot stand. " The bond of union 
may be nothing more than trust ; but it is 
only a perfect bond provided it be love. 
He liveth best who loveth best. It is, in 
a word, just so far as persons tend to 
become " individuals" and selfish — to 
love least — that they become worst, while 
he liveth best and has the greatest per- 
sonality who loveth best. 

But no man, however low he may fall 
in the depths of selfishness, can become a 
mere "individual," an absolutely closed 
system, "a unique existence perfectly im- 
pervious to other selves. ' ' But though no 
self can in actual life be thus cut off from 
all other persons, in philosophy it is pos- 
sible — or has been supposed possible — to 



Personality and Individuality 143 

imagine such a unique existence. What 
we find as a matter of fact in actual life 
are persons bound together in dependence 
on one another, a dependence implying 
trust at least, a trust which sometimes 
is and may always prove to be love. We 
never anywhere find an "individual" 
capable of solitary existence. If, however, 
as philosophers we simply set facts aside, 
and start from the assumption that I, the 
individual, have existence by myself, a 
unique existence impervious to other 
selves, then though in words — in the 
words "impervious to other selves" — 
we admit the possible existence of other 
selves beyond our own, we shall find that 
we have reduced the existence of other 
selves to a possibility and an inference. 
And when we have done that we shall 
have it pointed out to us that the only 
existence I as an individual can know is 
my own. I may, if I choose to make con- 
jectures, conjecture that there are other 
individuals. But the conjecture is one 
which no individual can possibly verify. 
The only existence I can know is my own. 



144 Personality 

If, therefore, the argument will continue, 
I am to base myself on fact and confine 
myself to fact, I am bound to hold that 
I, alone, solus, am the only self, or ipse, 
that I know to exist. In a word, solip- 
sism is the philosophical conclusion to 
which we are logically forced, if we start 
from the assumption that I, the individ- 
ual, have existence by myself, a unique 
existence, impervious to other selves. 
The conclusion is indeed a false one, and 
can be shown to be false, not only by 
pointing out that it starts from a premise 
which is false, but by showing that it con- 
tradicts itself. Its inherent self-contra- 
diction lies in the simple fact that if there 
were such a being as an individual, and 
there were only one individual in exist- 
ence, such a being could not know itself 
to be an individual. Only by contrast 
with another, not itself, could it know it- 
self to be an individual ; and such contrast 
is impossible, if we begin by assuming that 
one individual alone exists. 

By other philosophers, who seek the 
ground of all reality in "a unique exist- 



Personality and Individuality 145 

ence impervious to other selves, " but who 
feel the absurdity of seeking it in the 
human individual, escape is sought in the 
conception of the Absolute, that is, in 
"the unification of consciousness — the 
human and divine — in a single self. " 
But here again, if the Absolute is thus 
single and individual at the start and 
in the premises, single and individual it 
must remain to the end and in the con- 
clusion. If in the conclusion it appears 
to be divided into the divine self and the 
human, that must be mere appearance 
and false appearance, for the term " indi- 
vidual' ' means simply that which is 
individuum and cannot be divided. 

We find if we start from the false idea 
that " persons" are "individuals," so 
many closed systems, impervious, imper- 
meable, and impenetrable, it matters not 
whether we assume one or many such. 
If many, they remain closed systems in- 
accessible to one another, and isolated 
from each other by their very nature and 
definition. If we assume but one, then 
beyond that one we can never get, 



10 



146 Personality 

whether we adopt Solipsism or the theory 
of the Absolute. 

Let us therefore put aside the idea that 
any self is or can be "individual. " What 
we find as a matter of fact in actual life 
are persons, not isolated from each other 
but members of one another, bound to- 
gether more or less imperfectly by the 
bond of love. Personality, in this sense, 
that is, personality as we actually know 
it, is not an idea which carries with it, as 
part of its meaning, the denial of all selves 
or persons but one. On the contrary, it 
implies that "I" distinguish "myself" 
from other selves, and recognise the 
existence both of them and of myself. 
It implies, that is to say, that I am not 
only a "subject" to which they are pre- 
sented as "object," but that I too am 
"object" and that they are "subjects" 
to whom I am presented. And thereby 
it implies that both subjects and objects 
are embraced in a common world, which 
is one Reality. 

When M. Bergson asserts that there is 
movement but that there is nothing 



Personality and Individuality 147 

which moves, he is making an unmeaning 
and impossible assertion, which may lead 
to the denial of the existence of personal 
identity. If everywhere there is change 
and nothing but change, then nowhere is 
there identity ; and if nowhere can identity 
be found, then nowhere can any person 
exist, for a person having no identity is 
not a person at all. The complementary 
error to M. Bergson's is that made by 
those philosophers who regard change as 
a mere appearance, an unreality. They 
find the principle of all reality in identity 
— the identity of the One, the Absolute, 
in which they seek to unify the divine 
subject and the human. But thus to 
unify the divine and human subject in 
the Absolute is to destroy the reality of 
both, and in place of two reals to give us 
one blank identity. Identity, however, 
is not the only relation with which we 
are acquainted, there is also the relation 
of similarity; and it is important to bear 
in mind their difference. Similarity be- 
tween any two persons there may be: 
identity there cannot be. Only with 



148 Personality 

himself can any person be identical — 
not with any other. A plurality of selves 
is compatible with similarity, but can 
never form an identity. Nor can an 
identical self, or Absolute, be a plurality 
of selves. If there is only one subject, 
the Divine, then there can be no other 
selves. On the other hand, if there are a 
plurality of selves, if human beings really 
exist, and each one of us is a self, then it 
is impossible to maintain that the Divine 
self, or Absolute, alone exists. 

Let us then avoid both errors, the error 
of denying identity, the identity of a 
person with himself; and the error of 
denying difference — that difference which 
is implied by saying of two things that 
they are "similar, indeed.' ' To assert 
identity and to deny difference, in the 
case of the Divine personality and the 
human, is simply to destroy religion. 
As Prof essor Pringle-Patterson says, "Re- 
ligion is the self-surrender of the human 
will to the divine. ' Our wills are ours to 
make them Thine.' But this is a self- 
surrender which only self, only will, can 



Personality and Individuality 149 

make." And it is a surrender which is 
impossible, if there is no real difference 
between the Divine personality and the 
human, if the one reality is the identity 
of the Absolute. 

We never, as has been said above, find 
anywhere an " individual' ' capable of 
solitary existence. What we find as a 
matter of fact in actual life are persons 
bound together in dependence upon one 
another. This dependence has its meta- 
physical side and its moral side. On the 
metaphysical side it carries with it the 
fact that every person is both subject, 
cognisant of others, and object, of whom 
others are cognisant. That is to say, on 
the metaphysical side, it is fatal to the 
theory of Solipsism. On the moral side, 
this dependence on others implies trust 
and love. That is to say, on the moral 
side it is as incompatible with the theory 
of Egotism, as on the metaphysical side 
it is incompatible with Solipsism. Solip- 
sism is the theory that I alone exist. 
Egotism is that theory put into practice. 
Egotism can indeed be practised without 



150 Personality 

any formal or conscious acknowledgment 
of the metaphysical theory of Solipsism. 
It can be practised without any formal 
denial of the fact that there are other 
persons than myself. All that is neces- 
sary for its practical working is the prac- 
tical ignoring of the existence of others. 
And a merely theoretical recognition of 
the existence of my neighbour and my 
God is in effect and practice Egotism: 
their existence is not and cannot be really 
recognised in any way save by trust in 
them and love for them. The only bond 
of union between persons — Whether be- 
tween human persons or between the 
human person and the Divine — is love. 
If human beings are recognised by me 
merely as means to my own enjoyment or 
convenience, if gods are recognised merely 
as supernatural instruments for attain- 
ing my own desires, they are not so much 
conceived to exist as misconceived. As 
a matter of fact, it is impossible consist- 
ently and at all times for any man to 
treat all other beings, human and divine, 
as merely means at his disposal; and 



Personality and Individuality 151 

equally impossible for him to place no 
trust in them: there is honour even 
among thieves. Ignored, other beings 
cannot be in actual life. But if not 
treated as means, then they must be 
treated as being selves or persons as 
much as myself — that is, as being in them- 
selves ends. And it is impossible to 
treat them as ends, to treat them as my- 
self, without love. But if they are to be 
treated by myself as ends, there must be 
self -surrender on my part. If their will 
is to be done, there must be self-sacrifice 
on my part. But self -surrender to a 
human will places the person to whom the 
surrender is made in the position of a 
human being who treats others as merely 
means to his own purposes or his own 
enjoyment. Such self-surrender — which, 
alas! is possible — defeats the very pur- 
pose of the love which prompts it: it 
robs the love of its very purpose and its 
very nature, for it harms the object loved. 
There is only One to whom self can be sur- 
rendered without defeating the very 
purpose of self-sacrifice — and that is God. 



152 Personality 

Love of our neighbour, to achieve its end, 
must be love of God. So only can it be 
love, pure and undefiled. Regarded thus, 
religion is not the invention, either of 
priests or of men. It is not an accretion 
from without. It is nothing external — ■ 
no ritual or ceremony. It is an indefeas- 
ible element of personality; it is that 
bond of union between selves which is 
denied implicitly if we conceive selves as 
" individuals,' ' and which is implied in 
the very conception of "personality." 
A person is one who is both subject, as 
cognisant of others; and objects of whom 
others are cognisant. As a person he is 
also a subject who loves and an object 
loved, or he is no person at all. Others 
may know him and love him ; that is, he 
may be object of their knowledge and love 
— but he cannot be those others who know 
and love him — as subject he is for ever 
different from those subjects. What then 
is it possible for one subject to know of 
those others who, though objects to him, 
are subjects to themselves? and how is 
such knowledge possible? A dominating 



Personality and Individuality 153 

personality forces its way everywhere, 
pervades everything. Its reality, when 
we are submitting to it, is the last thing 
we can doubt. Yet what do we know of 
it? and how? We know the person by 
his acts and words, for he may be said to 
be what his words and works are. They 
are the objective side of him, which is 
what is known to us. But as a subject 
he has a centre or focus of his own which 
never can in truth be ours. From it he 
sees his acts and words as we cannot. " It 
would be untrue, " as Mr. Bosanquet says 
{Individuality and Value, xxxiv.), "to 
suppose that circumstances are in one 
mind or active focus what they seem as 
seen from the outside, or as in any other 
mind or focus/ ' And the fact that he 
sees his acts and words as we cannot, 
far from suggesting that he does not exist 
or has no personality, confirms his exist- 
ence and personality, for that is the focus 
or point of view from which we are con- 
scious of our own. It is in this way that 
personality other than our own — whether 
human or divine — is known to us. We 



154 Personality 

know God by his manifestations, as we 
know human personalities by theirs. 
But in the one case as in the other, there 
is a centre which never can in fact be ours. 
And in neither case does this fact suggest 
doubt as to the reality, for our own per- 
sonality is equally impenetrable to others, 
and its reality equally beyond possibility 
of doubt. 

From the intellectual point of view, 
from the point of view of knowledge, a 
person is both the subject who knows 
others and an object of knowledge to 
others, and as subject he is for ever differ- 
ent from others. Thus as a centre or 
focus of knowledge, as a subject who 
knows, a person is for ever different from 
all other persons — we might even say 
inaccessible to them, for only as object 
can he be known, never as subject But 
every person is a subject and an object 
of love as well as of knowledge. And the 
question naturally suggests itself, whether 
from the point of view of love there is or 
can be the same difference as there is 
from the point of view of knowledge. 



Personality and Individuality 155 

In one sense — and we must not disparage 
the importance of it — there is: unless 
there be two subjects or persons there 
can be no love. Nor can there be mutual 
love, unless each of the persons is the 
object of the other's love. But, if we 
insist that from the point of view of love 
two persons must be, as they are from 
the point of view of knowledge, not only 
different but inaccessible, then we are in 
fact denying the existence of love. Love 
is the bond of union between two persons ; 
and the fact that it exists, however imper- 
fectly, is enough to show that it is 
impossible to speak of inaccessibility 
where love exists. To speak of the per- 
sons as inaccessible would be simply to 
relapse into the error, already pointed 
out, of regarding persons as " individuals' ' 
— impervious, impermeable, impenetrable. 
The plain fact is that the intellectual 
relation between subject and object is 
not the relation of love which exists 
between, or rather which unites, two 
subjects; it is vain to ignore the relation 
of love; and still more vain to suppose 



156 Personality 

that the most important question to put 
in philosophy is, How is knowledge pos- 
sible? There still remains the infinitely 
more important question of, What is 
implied by the existence of love? And if, 
to answer that question, we are bound to 
transcend the mere intellectual reasons 
which philosophy can give, let us comfort 
ourselves with the reflection that "The 
heart has its reasons which the reason 
knows not of." And let us not imagine 
that in doing so we are straying beyond 
the bounds of logic. Mr. Bosanquet says 
well, "It is the strict and fundamental 
truth that love is the mainspring of 
logic" (p. 341). "By logic we under- 
stand the supreme law or nature of 
experience, the impulse towards unity 
and reverence (the positive spirit of non- 
contradiction) by which every fragment 
yearns towards the whole to which it 
belongs" (p. 340). 

Though we may seem to have wandered 
far from it, we have in fact been steadily 
approaching an answer to the question 
with which we started in this chapter; 



Personality and Individuality 157 

and Mr. Bosanquet's words may make it 
clear to us. We started from the ad- 
mitted fact that change takes place, and 
from the question whether the direction 
of change is itself always changing. We 
looked without us, on the changes going 
on around us, and found in nature ten- 
dencies to uniformity, but we found no 
means of deciding whether the course and 
direction of change is or is not always 
changing. Then we turned our gaze 
inwards, to our inner life, peradventure 
there we might look into the very founda- 
tion and reality of the universe. But it 
was into the inner life of ourselves as 
persons, not as individuals, that we were 
brought to look — persons not cut off 
from one another, but united, not by the 
mere fact of personality, but by the act 
wherein it reveals itself and its nature, 
which is love. But of love as it exists 
between human personalities the most we 
can say is that it is, in Mr. Bosanquet's 
words, "the impulse towards unity." 
An impulse it is, and towards unity. But 
as between human persons the unity is 



158 Personality 

never reached. Only between the three 
Persons, divine Persons, who are one God 
— only in the Trinity in Unity — does it 
exist. The unity is God, and "God is 
love" — the Holy Spirit proceeding from 
the Father and the Son. As between 
human persons, love is an impulse, and 
towards unity. But the unity is never 
attained. The impulse is constantly 
thwarted, and is thwarted by the pres- 
ence in the human personality of that 
which is absent from the Divine — by the 
presence of evil. Evil it is which divides 
man from man, and which divides a man 
against himself. "The evil self, " Mr. 
Bosanquet says (p. 350), "is the adver- 
sary of unification of experience, and the 
vehicle of contradiction in the very heart 
of the self." Self-contradiction is a fact 
experienced not only in the domain of the 
intellect, but in the spiritual nature of 
each one of us who has occasion to say- 
to himself, " Miserable man ! what I would, 
that I do not. " From that inconsistency 
and contradiction, whether in the intel- 
lectual or the spiritual sphere, when we 



Personality and Individuality 159 

are conscious of it, we strive, more or less 
feebly, to escape. And there is only one 
direction in which we can escape. From 
inconsistency of thought and the contra- 
diction of our spiritual nature, escape can 
only be in the direction of the unification 
of experience after which the intellect 
strives, and of the unity of love for which 
our spiritual nature yearns. In both 
cases the impulse is the same; though in 
the one case we are apt to call it logic 
and in the other love. It is the same 
impulse in both cases. "It is the strict 
and fundamental truth that love is the 
mainspring of logic. " And the impulse 
of both is in the same direction — towards 
unity. If the change which marks the 
inner life of each one of us is not always 
towards unity, but is divided against it- 
self and dispersive; if there is contradic- 
tion in the very heart of the self, still the 
very words in which we formulate the 
statement, that change is not always 
towards unity, imply that there is a unity 
of life and of love to which we do some- 
times and might more often strive. If 



160 Personality 

contradiction is in the very heart of the 
self, then the heart of the self is not itself 
contradiction. In that reflection we may 
find some comfort. We cannot, however, 
but find some difficulty. If what I would, 
that I do not, if contradiction is in the 
very heart of the self, then the self can- 
not be a unity. Only where no evil is 
can there be unity — not in the heart of 
man. Once more, there is no " individ- 
ual,' ' no man who is individuum, not 
divided against himself. And there is 
no man who does not yearn tg cease to be 
divided against himself and attain to 
peace — "the peace which passeth human 
understanding.' ' 

The law of the striving of the self is 
that it strives towards unity and co- 
herence, towards the coherence of logic 
and the unity of love which is the main- 
spring of logic. "A self, " Mr. Bosanquet 
says, " appears to us as a striving towards 
unity and coherence." And "a true 
self, " he says, "is something to be made 
and won, to be held together with pains 
and labour, not something given to be 



Personality and Individuality 161 

enjoyed" (p. 338). "The evil self is the 
adversary of unification of experience and 
the vehicle of contradiction in the very 
heart of the self. " It is a truth, known 
to all from personal experience, that evil 
is that " contradiction in the very heart of 
the self, " whereby man is divided against 
himself, and whereby any society of men 
is divided against itself so that their 
fellowship is endangered and even, it may 
be, destroyed. And with our attention 
fixed on that fact, we may be tempted 
not only to say that the law of the striving 
of the self is to strive towards unity, but 
to be content with saying that, and not to 
inquire precisely as to the nature of the 
unity for which the man strives who is 
divided against himself. If we are con- 
tent to leave the nature of this unification 
undetermined and ambiguous, it will be 
open to any one to suppose that the uni- 
fication of the self which is striven after 
consists in driving out the evil self, which 
is "the adversary of the unification of 
experience, " and so converting the self 
into an " individual' ' who, being indi- 



n 



1 62 Personality 

viduum, is no longer divided against 
himself. But — even if the unification of 
the self into an "individual" were pos- 
sible—if, that is to say, the self could 
cease to be a person — still, the only result 
attained by the unification of the self 
into an "individual" would be that the 
individual would be brought into unity 
with himself — not that he would be 
brought into unity with other human 
beings, still less with God. And in such 
a process of unification there would be 
no need, and no room even, /or love. 
For love carries us beyond the narrow 
bounds of our own personality, whereas 
this process of unification is supposed to 
take place entirely within them. If, 
then, "by logic we understand the su- 
preme law of experience," and if it is 
"the strict and fundamental truth that 
love is the mainspring of logic," then 
there is no logic in the supposition that 
unification is to be attained by bringing 
an individual into unity with himself, 
and, in that supposition, love there is 
none. Shall we then say that the law of 



Personality and Individuality 163 

the striving of the self is to strive towards 
unity with others? And shall we say that 
by " others" we mean persons who are 
human? If human personalities were the 
only personality known to us, then indeed 
we should have to hold that the law of 
the striving of the self is only to strive 
towards unity with other human selves; 
and we should have also to hold that the 
law was one incapable of fulfilment. Im- 
pervious and impenetrable to us, other 
persons certainly are not. Nor are we 
perfectly inaccessible to them. But our 
access to them and to their love, pro- 
foundly though at times it moves us, is 
not that which we seek to find when we 
turn to God. 

We shall then be prepared to accept 
Mr. Bosanquet's statement (p. 335), that 
11 a self appears to us as a striving towards 
unity and coherence," and to understand 
it to mean that the unity and coherence 
striven after by the self is that unity and 
coherence with other personalities which 
is to be attained only by love. But to 
describe a self as the striving towards 



i64 Personality 

unity and coherence is to imply that the 
striving, being towards unity and coher- 
ence, is from a condition which is not 
one of unity and coherence, but of di- 
vision and incoherence. And it is of im- 
portance to ask ourselves what exactly is 
implied by such division and incoherence. 
It will have been noticed that Mr. Bosan- 
quet speaks of "the evil self" and "the 
true self." And we may be tempted to 
picture the division and incoherence, of 
which we are conscious within ourselves, 
as a struggle between the evil self and the 
true self. But there are two considera- 
tions either of which should suffice to 
show that such a picture is a misrepre- 
sentation of the plain facts. The first 
consideration is that such a picture is 
absolutely inconsistent with the fact that 
"the self appears to us as a striving 
towards unity and coherence." For, in 
our moral struggles, victory consists in 
the expulsion of evil and the triumph of 
good, not in striving towards making 
them compatible with one another; they 
cannot be unified, and no coherence is 



Personality and Individuality 165 

possible between them — though we flatter 
ourselves that our darling sins are not so 
incompatible with goodness that we must 
actually abandon them altogether. The 
striving then towards unity and coherence 
cannot be a striving to make good and 
evil cohere together and to form them 
into a unity. That is the first considera- 
tion. The other consideration is that if 
we picture the division and incoherence 
of which we are conscious within ourselves 
as a struggle between the evil self and 
the true self, then we are bound to ask 
what it is that is thus divided. It is 
both untrue and useless to say that there 
is nothing that is thus divided: useless, 
because if there is nothing to be divided, 
there can be no division ; untrue, because 
I know that "I" am divided against 
myself. If, therefore, it is alike useless 
and untrue to say that there is nothing 
in our moral struggles that is divided 
against itself and incoherent with itself, 
then what we are presented with from the 
beginning of our moral history is unity 
and coherence — though an imperfect co- 



1 66 Personality 

herence and an incomplete unity. And 
this unity and coherence, however im- 
perfect and incomplete, is one self — and 
that self " myself' ' — otherwise "I" have 
no interest in it. Until my personality 
begins, for me nothing exists. When it 
begins, it is there — divided and incoherent 
within itself doubtless, but still a person- 
ality and a self ; and a unity, as is shown 
by the very fact that it is capable of 
division, and is divided. 

There is, however, much danger in 
allowing our attention to be concentrated 
on the problem of the unity and coherence 
of the self. The danger is that of being 
drawn unawares into the morass of Solip- 
sism, and of supposing that the only 
problem is how I may attain unity and 
coherence with myself. If "I" alone 
exist, that is indeed the only problem. 
If, however, "I" am not an "individual" 
in the solipsist sense, but a "person"; 
and if as a "person" I am for logic both 
subject and object; and if for the love, 
which is the mainspring of logic, I am 
also both subject and object, then "per- 



Personality and Individuality 167 

sonality" implies other personalities, 
human and divine. The unity and the 
coherence after which a " person' ' strives, 
"the peace which passeth all understand- 
ing, " is to be gained only by that love 
which is the impulse towards unity with 
one's neighbour and one's God. 



INDEX 



Absolute, the, 136, 145, 146, 
147-149 

Abstractions, TJ 

Accidents, 3, 5 

Agent, other than human, 

35 

Agnosticism, 40 
Agud, 17 
Analysis, 75, 76 
Animism, 6, 17, 27 ff. 
Anthropocentric notions, 3 ,4 
Appearances, 59, 82 , 85, 

98 ff., 145 
Archasopteryx, 127 
Assumptions, premature, 14 
Attention, 89, 94 ff. 
Attributes, personal, 30 

Being, is change, 109, no 
Bergson, M., 83 ff., 127 ff., 

146 ff. 
Bosanquet, Mr., 130, 133, 

153, 156, 157, 158, 160, 

163, 164 
Broom-stick, 70 

Certainty, and error, 1, 2 
Change, 79 ff., 82, 92, 157 

direction of, 125 ff. 

indivisible, 85 ff. 

and identity, 103, 104; 
consciousness of, 105 

a relation, 97 
Chariot, 122 ff. 
Chota Nagpur, 17 
Clodd, Mr., 16, 17, 28, 30 
Closed systems, 138 ff. 
Coherence, 126 



Common-sense, 68, 72, 77 
Comparison, implies a sub- 
ject, 63 
Conditions, 7, 8 
Continuity, 61 ff. 

of change, 119 ff. 

of thought, 67 ff. 

and unity, 116 ff. 
Co-operation, 137 
Creation, incessant, 112 

Dots, 72 ff., 79 

Eclipses, 6 
Egotism, 149, 150 
Empirical Self, 50, 51, 52- 

55 

Engai, 18 

Epiphenomenal conscious- 
ness, 13 

Error, and truth, 3 

Evil, 158 ff. 

Evolution, 28, 37, 78, 82, 
109, in ff., 127 
dispersive, 113, 128 
creative, 115; ascent 
and descent, 129 

Existence, and change, 92, 
102, 103 
our own, 92, 106, 108 

Expected, the, 33 

Explanation, 32 ff. 

Force, physical, 137 

Fountain, 129 

Freedom, and absence of, 

129; is change, 130; 

misconceived, 132 



169 



170 



Index 



Free-will, 18, 31, 111, 112, 

120 and consciousness, 

121 
imprevisible, 112 ff; and 

unity, 116 
Fugue, 90 
Future, non-existent, 113; 

and past, 130, 131 

Geocentric notion, 3, 4 
God, 40, 81, 134, 150, 151, 
152, 154, 158, 162, 167 

Hollis, Mr., 18 
Holy Spirit, 158 
Hume, 41 iff. 

Identity, 55 ff., 80, 81-83, 
115, 116, 147, 148 
personal, not an inference, 

60, 62, 65 
and change, 104 
Ignorance, 36 
Imagination, 95, 96 
Immobility, 84 ff., 94 
Impersonal causes, 6 
Impersonality, 24 ff., 81 
Individual, 134 ff.; and the 

world, 80, 81 
Individuum, 160, 161, 162 
Inferences, correct and in- 
correct, 2 
Inner life, 90, 116, 134 ff. 

James, William, 49 ff. 
Jupiter tonans, 1 1 ff. 

Knowledge, unity of, 14 
Kutchi, 17 

Laws of co-existence and 
succession, 8 ff.; of 
Nature, 78 

Life, rush of, 114 

Logic, mainspring of, 156, 
159, 162, 166 
and love, 159, 162 



Love, 140 ff., 150 ff. 

Mana, 17 

Manitou, 17 

Material Self, 50 ff. 

Me, artificial, 96; and mine, 

63 
Melody, 109, 116 
Metaphysics, 39, 42, 48, 82 
Mill, 130 
Miracles, 115 
Moments, 77 
Movement, 83 ff. 
MulungUy 18 

Nature and human nature, 

10, 129 
Necklace, 95 
Neighbour, my, 150, 167 
Not-me, 120 

Object, and subject, 52, 53 
Orenda, iS 
Organisms, 136 ff. 

Peace, 167 
Pearls, 95 

Perceptions, 42 ff.; and 

self, 47; and percipient. 

50 

Persistence, 103, 104 

Person and things, 25, 26 

end as well as means, 150, 

151 

Personal power, 7, 11 
Personification, 70 
Phenomena, mental, 57, 

58,59 

Plato, 134 

Power, impersonal, 17 ff., 
20 ff., 31 ff.; a hy- 
pothesis, 22; for which 
science has no use, 23 

Pre- Animism, 16 ff. 

and personality, 18 ff. 

Pre- Animistic Religion, 17 



Index 



171 



Predetermination, 38 
Present, the, 89 ff. 
Pringle- Patterson, Prof., 

135, 148 

Progress of science, 8 
Psychic dispositions, 52 
Psychology, 9 fL, 39 ff. 
Pyramid, 139 

Reality, 82 ff., 146; ulti- 
mate principle of, 92 
Religion, 152; impersonal, 

Resemblance, and identity, 

60, 61 
Risley, Sir Herbert, 17 

Sameness, 10 1 ff.; in change, 

103, 104, in 
Science, 8 ff., 39 ff., 131 

and fact, 77 

and pre-animism, 20 ff. 
Self, 41 ff. 

existence of, 2, 3; notion 

of, 3, 5 

a false inference, 98 

permanent, 13 

present and past, 66, 67 
Self of Selves, 53 
Self-contradiction , 158 
Selfhood, 81 
Selfishness, 141, 142 
Self-surrender, 148, 149, 

151 

Selves, transient, 66 ff.; 

successive, 74 
Sense of identity, 57 
Shell, 114, 127 
Similarity, 147, 148 
Social self, 50 ff. 
Society, 137 ff. 
Solipsism, 136, 144, 146, 

149, 150, 166 
Spirit, 81 
Spiritual Self, 50 ff. 



States, 86 ff., 97; non- 
existent 92 ff.; 98 ff. 

Stream of thought, 68 ff. 

Subject, and object, 52; 
or person, 59 ff., no, 
146 ff. 
according to Bergson, 

91 ff., 97 ff. 
of love, 152 ff., 166, 167; 
of knowledge, 154 ff. 

Substance, 3, 86 ff. 

Substratum, 95, 122, 123 

"Things," 25, 29, and per- 
sons, 25, 26 
non-existent, 86, 87, 92 
and change, 86 ff. 
Thinker, the, 12 ff., 69 ff. 
and thought, 56, 57, 63, 
64 
Thinkers, plurality of, 74 
Thought, the thinker, 69, 

70 
Thoughts, cognitive, 68 

passing, 69 ff. 
Thud-Thud, 79 
Thunder, 7 

Thunderer, the, n, 12 
Trains, railway, 84 ff., 

99 ff. 
Trinity, the, 158 
Tune, 87 ff. 

Unexpected, the, 6 ff. 
Unification, of experience, 

158 ff. 
Uniformities, 9 ff., 18 ff., 
30 ff., 33 ff., 78, 128 ff. 
of nature, 35 ff., 114, 115, 

violations of, 36 
rational nature of, 130, 

131 

Unity, 74 ff., 115 ff., 126, 

139, 156-159, 160; of 
change, 117 
principle of, 140 



172 



Index 



Universe, 79 ff., 109 ff.; 

foundation of, 134 
Unkulunkulu, 18 



Wakonda, 17 
Whole, the, 80, 114 



Will, 8, 36, 37 

arbitrary, 10 

free, i.e., dispersive, 128 
World, and the individual, 
80, 81 

Yesterday's self, 64 ff.; 
thought, 65 ff. 



Jk Selection from the 
Catalogue of 

G. P. PUTNAM'S SONS 



Complete Catalogue sent 
on application 



Only Authorized Edition 

An Introduction to 
Metaphysics 

By Henri Bergson 

Member of the Institute and Professor of the 
College de France 

Translated by T. E. Hulme 

Authorized Edition, Revised by the Author, with 
Additional Material 

12 °. 75 cts. net. By mail, 85 cts. 

11 1 certify that the translation of my volume Introduc- 
tion to Metaphysics, which has been prepared by Mr. T. 
E. Hulme, is the only English version to which I have 
given my authorization. I may add that Mr. Hulme was 
excellently well qualified for his task by the careful study 
that he has made of the whole series of my writings. I 
have examined his translation with care and am able 
to say that it renders with remarkable accuracy the 
thought and the conclusions presented in my volume." 

Henri Bergson. 

This volume forms the best introduction to M. Bergson 's 
philosophy. In it the author explains with a thoroughness 
not attempted in his other books the precise meaning he 
wishes to convey by the word intuition. A reading of 
this book is, therefore, indispensable to a proper under- 
standing of Bergson's position. German, Italian, Hun- 
garian, Swedish, and Russian translations of it have 
already appeared, testifying to its intrinsic importance 
and indicating the scope of its appeal. 

G. P. Putnam's Sons 

New YorK London 



The Psychology of 
Revolution 

By Gustave Le Bon 

Author of "The Crowd: A Study of the Popular Mind" 

Translated by Bernard Miall 

8°. 337 Pages. $2.50 net. By mail, $2.75 

Brief Contents 

Part I. — The Psychological Elements of Revolutionary 
Movements — General Characteristics of Revolutions 
— The Forms of Mentality Prevalent During 
Revolution. 

Part II. — The Origins of the French Revolution — The 
Rational, Affective, Mystic, and Collective Influences 
Active During the Revolution — Tke Conflict between 
Ancestral Influences and Revolutionary Principles. 

Part III. — The Recent Evolution of the Revolutionary 
Principles. 

A book of an arresting character, in which the author 
makes specific application of his theory of crowds to 
activities in which the influence of the masses is most 
far-reaching. In it are discussed with that graceful turn 
of phrase of which the author is a master, the psychology 
of revolutions in general, whether religious or political, 
and the mental and emotional make-up of the leaders of 
such movements, with very special and detailed con- 
sideration of the French Revolution. The examples are, 
by preference, chosen from French history, but universal 
history is drawn upon too, even to the inclusion of 
such recent events as the political cataclysms in Turkey, 
Portugal, and China. 

G. P. Putnam's Sons 

New York London 



In 1908, Dr. Eucken was awarded the Nobel Prize for 
literature. His books have been translated into many 
languages and their influence is widespread. 

Works by Dr. Rudolf Eucken 

Professor of Philosophy, University of Jena 

The Truth 0! Religion 

Translated by W. Tudor Jones, Ph.D. 

3 °0 Theological Translation Library Series, $3.50 net 
By mail, $3,75 

Contest for the Spiritual Life 

8 °, Theological Translation Library Series 

The Life of the Spirit 
An Introduction to Philosophy 

Translated by F. L. Pogson, M.A. 

12 °0 Crown Theological Library, $1,50 net By mail, $1,65 
Second Edition, With Introductory Note by Author 

Religion and Life 

16 °0 Frontispiece, 50 cts. net, By mail, 60 cts, 

An Interpretation 

of Rudolf Eucken's Philosophy 

By W. Tudor Jones, Ph.D. (Jena) 

12°0 With Portrait, $1,50 net. By mail, $1,65 

" Germany has again given us a great constructive 
philosopher, whose influence has gone out through all the 
thinking world. . . . No one can read these powerful 
pages without understanding that a strong thinker has 
arisen among us, and without enlargement and deepening 
of his own thought." — Congregationalism 

" The philosophy of Eucken shares with that of Bergson 
the keenest living interest of thoughtful men of all classes 
at the present day. . . . Eucken has endeavored in this 
book to put his constructive system into the clearest and 
most elaborate form." — Continent. 

G. P. Putnam's Sons 

New "YorK London 



"A delightful Essayist" 


-The Dial. 


By Arthur Christopher Benson 


Fellow of Magdalene College 


, Cambridge 


The Upton Letters 


$1.25 net 


From a College Window 


$1.25 " 


The Silent Isle . 


$1.50 " 


Beside Still Waters . 


$1.25 " 


The Altar Fire . 


$1.50 " 


At Large . 


$1.50 " 


The Schoolmaster 


$1.25 " 


The Leaves of the Tree 


$1.50 " 


John Ruskin 


$1.50 " 


The Child of the Dawn 


. ' $1.50 " 


Paul the Minstrel 


$1.75 " 


Thy Rod and Thy Staff 


$1.50 " 


Along the Road 


$1.50 " 


Joyous Gard 





SPECIALI/IBRARY EDITION of The Upton Letters— 
Beside Still Waters— From a College Window. 
Limited to 500 sets, 3 vols., Svo. Printed on 
Old Stratford linen. Handsomely bound, gilt 
tops, deckle edges. Sold in sets only. $ 7.50 net. 

An atmosphere of rest and tranquil thoughtfulness en- 
velops the reader, as he peruses these books so full of 
sage reflection, humor, shrewd observation, and service- 
able thought; so fluent, accurate, and beautiful in style; 
so pleasingly varied in cadence. 



G. P. Putnam's Sons 



New York 



London 



MAY 31 1913 



Deacidified using the Bookkeeper process. 
Neutralizing agent: Magnesium Oxide 
Treatment Date: Sept. 2004 

PreservationTechnologies 

A WORLD LEADER IN PAPER PRESERVATION 

1 1 1 Thomson Park Drive 
Cranberry Township, PA 16066 
(724) 779-21 1 1 



iS 



